CHRISTIANITY 

it 

AND 

RECENT SPECULATIONS. 

BY MINISTERS OF THE FREE CHURCH. 
WITH A PREFACE 

BY 

EOBEET S. CANDLISH, D.D., 

PRINCIPAL OF THE NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH. 



JOHN 



EDINBURGH : 
MACLAREN, PRINCES 
1866. 



STREET. 




Exchange 
Western Ont. Univ. Libia** 
Apr- 15- 1938 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE, 1 
By Kev. Thomas Smith, M.A. 

II. ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES, . 33 

By Robert Rainy, D.D., Professor of Divinity and 
Church History, New College, Edinburgh. 

III. SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO SECU- 

LAR PROGRESS, . . . . . 67 

By William G. Blaikie, D.D., F.R.S.E. 

IV. THE PURPOSE AND FORM OF HOLY SCRIPTURE, 97 

By Rev. Andrew Crichton, B.A. 

V. PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW, . . . 125 

By John Duns, D.D., F.R.S.E., Professor of Natural Science, 
New College, Edinburgh. 



VI. THE SABBATH, . . . . . .153 

By Rev. Principal Candlish. 



PKEFATOKY NOTE. 



I DO not see much occasion for any preliminary re- 
marks of mine to introduce this little volume to the 
public ; nor have I indeed any thing of importance 
to say. But as my colleagues seemed to think that 
it fell to the senior member of the body to prepare 
some sort of opening statement on his own behalf 
and theirs, and as that was made a condition of the 
publication, I felt that necessity was laid upon me. 

The delivery of this course of lectures was en- 
tirely matter of private arrangement among the 
lecturers themselves ; there having been no official 
authorization from any quarter, nor even any gene- 
ral consultation of brethren. We thought it best 
to proceed upon our own responsibility, committing 
no one beyond our little circle to an approval either 
of our plan or of its execution. It was with some 
hesitation that we ventured on what I may call our 
experiment. But it turned out to be successful 
beyond our expectations. The crowded audiences 
who filled the church to overflowing consisted 



vi 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



largely, or rather almost entirely, of men, and young 
men, of the class we wished especially to reach. 
And their singularly close attention impressed ail 
the lecturers. 

A twofold inference may be drawn from this 
success. 

In the first place, it is clear that something in 
the line of our movement is needed; something that 
will turn the Sabbath to account for more than 
what is held to be included under the ordinary con- 
ducting of public worship and the ordinary preach- 
ing of the gospel. Let me not be misunderstood. 
I have no faith in new plans and panaceas for im- 
proving on the old way of " beseeching men to be 
reconciled to God." And I deprecate, with all my 
heart, the introduction of scientific or literary 
discussions into the pulpit, under the guise of ac- 
commodation to modern thought. But, leaving 
untouched the stated Sabbath means of grace, as 
hereditarily handed down to us from our fathers, I 
cannot but think that we have opportunities on the 
Sabbath of, at least, occasional arguments and ap- 
peals, bearing on the questions that touch religion 
from without. I say occasional ; for I believe that 
therein lies their safety and their strength. 

Then, secondly, it is still more clear, that intelli- 
gent and thoughtful men, in the class to which I 
refer, are not only exercised on these subjects, but 
are willing, nay eager, to come and hear what the 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



vii 



defenders and expounders of revelation have to say. 
Provided only they know and understand that there 
is to be no attempt to put down inquiry, brevi 
manu, by the mere summary assertion of authority 
and imputation of heresy, they are prepared to give 
a fair hearing to us, if we merely show that we are 
as ready to receive the proved facts of science, as 
we ask them to be to receive the proved facts of 
Scripture. Their jealousy of theologians has often 
arisen out of an idea that theological dicta must 
override and overrule all scientific inquiries and 
results. Let them see that we face the question in 
a very different spirit ; that we have something of 
the Baconian as well as the dogmatic mind in us ; 
and that we hold sacred the facts and inferences of 
philosophy, physical and metaphysical, as having a 
distinct foundation of their own, not to be touched 
by indirect arguments from any other quarter. Of 
course, we ask the same admission to be made on 
the side of theological science. And there is this 
difference in our favour. We are quite prepared to let 
apparently antagonistic or contradictory conclusions, 
occurring in distinct spheres of discovery and thought, 
remain unexplained, if that must be so, for a time ; 
to accept both, each on its own proper evidence ; and 
to await the result of further disclosure on either 
side. Our opponents, on the other hand, are too 
often found prematurely pressing discrepancies, as 
though their attainments were so complete and final 



viii 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



as to warrant their insisting on making them the 
law, even within a sphere which in their own nature 
they do not touch. The former of these courses is 
surely the more philosophical in itself, as well as 
the more becoming, when our ignorance of many 
things in heaven and earth, and our partial infor- 
mation about all things, are taken into account. I 
think it will appear that it is the line taken in 
these lectures. 

There is only one other remark I have to make, 
suggested specially by the first two lectures, and 
confirmed by the others. It is this. The real work 
such inquirers and thinkers have to do now, is to 
shew that there is absolutely and literally nothing 
new, either in the state of the question or in the 
mode of dealing with it, as regards the great con- 
troversy about the authority of the Bible, and its 
contents. The skill, and I must add the effrontery, 
with which our sceptical friends contrive to put a 
new face on an old phantom, and reproduce an old 
cavil in a new form, is beyond belief beforehand. 
I am mistaken if there is not something in these 
Lectures fitted to impress candid minds with this 
truth, though I cannot now illustrate or elaborate it. 

E. S. C. 



52 Melville Street, 
March 7, 1866. 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH 
SCIENCE. 

BY THE 

REV. THOMAS SMITH, M.A., 



When I was invited to take that part in this course 
of lectures which has been actually assigned to me, 
and to treat of the consistency between the declara- 
tions of the Bible and the discoveries of science in 
respect of those matters which are in any way touched 
upon by them in common, I shrank at first from the 
task, from a feeling and a fear that the undertaking 
of it would be regarded by many as implying a pre- 
tension to scientific attainments which I have no right 
to put forward, and to an acquaintance with the recent 
progress of science which the engagements of my life 
make it simply impossible that I should possess in 
any considerable degree of extensiveness or minute- 
ness. I was, however, induced to consent to the 
arrangement proposed, mainly by the consideration 
that no such pretension is necessarily involved in the 
undertaking to discuss such a subject, since any one 
very moderately acquainted with science may treat it 
usefully and satisfactorily, inasmuch as the questions 
at issue, with a few exceptions, and these by no means 
the most important, relate to the general principles, 
and not to the minute details, of scientific discovery. 
I have nothing further to say by way of introduction, 

A 



2 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 

except this ; that I requested that the subject of the 
lecture should be stated negatively, rather than posi- 
tively ; so that I should not be pledged to show that 
there is any positive confirmation of any statements 
of the Bible by any discoveries made by science ; or, 
on the other hand, any considerable light cast upon 
the discoveries of the one by the statements of the 
other ; but only negatively, that there is no inconsis- 
tency betwixt the two, which should prevent our 
holding by both with perfect confidence. 

From this it will appear that we propose to stand 
wholly on the defensive ; that it is no part of our 
undertaking to deduce any positive argument for the 
truth and divine inspiration of the Scriptures from 
any harmony that may be found to subsist between 
any of their statements on the one hand, and the con- 
clusions of true science on the other. We have only 
to show negatively that there is no such force in the 
objections which have been made to the Scriptures, 
on the ground of supposed inconsistencies, as to re- 
quire of us to reject them, or even to suspend our 
belief in them, until the supposed inconsistencies can 
be cleared away. If we succeed in doing this, we 
submit that it is no small service rendered to the 
cause of defence, since it allows the positive evidences 
derived from other quarters, to produce their legiti- 
mate and unimpaired effect. 

It is true that we shall have occasion to allude to 
certain peculiarities in the manner in which the Bible 
occasionally touches upon scientific subjects, which 
might form the basis, if not of a positive argument, at 
least of a strong presumption that the finger of God is 
here, and that the human penmen must have been 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 3 

.guided by a wisdom far higher than their own. But 
we wish it to be distinctly understood that this is 
accidental rather than essential to our argument ; 
which will be complete when we have shewn, as we 
trust to be able to shew conclusively, that there is 
nothing in the Bible in such wise inconsistent with 
any truth that is fairly ascertained by scientific re- 
search as to make it in the slightest degree improbable 
that the Bible is inspired by the omniscient God. If 
there be, over and above this, produced or strengthened 
an impression of the extreme unlikelihood, amounting 
in fact to a virtual impossibility, that so many men, 
living in so remote ages, could have written so large 
a book, of so diversified contents, without actually 
coming into collision with truths which have been 
only recently discovered by scientific men, unless they 
had been specially guided by Him to whom all truth 
is known, and all events foreknown — if such an im- 
pression be produced or confirmed, of course we shall 
be all the more satisfied ; but we wish it to be dis- 
tinctly understood at the outset that the production 
of such a positive impression or conviction, is more 
than, and is in fact different from, what we have 
undertaken. 

And now, brethren, let us say that we feel very 
deeply the importance of our subject, and the respon- 
sibility, we may say the solemnity, of the position 
which we occupy ; and let us impress upon you that 
this responsibility and solemnity it is yours to share 
with us. We come not here to an encounter of wits, 
a logical battle in which victory is to be sought at any 
cost, or by any means. It is not the battle of the 
warrior that is before us, whose confused noise, and 



4 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 



garments rolled in blood, might stir up the natural 
enthusiasm of the heart, the love of contest and the 
desire of victory, " and the stern joy which warriors 
feel, in foemen worthy of their steel." It is not our 
part, at least it is not our main part, to set ourselves 
against ' the oppositions of science, falsely so called/ 
but cordially accepting the conclusions of science, 
which we believe to be upon the whole sound, and 
cordially accepting the declarations of the Bible, as 
they are understood by common sense and intelligent 
scholarship, we have to act the part of peace-makers 
between the respective champions of those two classes 
of truths ; and that not merely by urging upon them 
the rightness or expediency of mutual forbearance, 
but by demonstrating that they have positively no 
cause of quarrel. 

We shall conduct our argument by laying down 
certain propositions, and proving or illustrating them 
as they may seem severally to require. 

I. First of all, then, we call you to observe, that 
the Bible is written in ordinary language, such as is 
used by men in their common intercourse with one 
another. This seems to be at once so unquestionably 
the fact, and at the same time so essentially necessary 
to the very idea of a revelation addressed to mankind, 
and fitted to be of any practical value to them, that 
it seems strange that it should require even to be 
stated as a step in our argument. It is manifest, that 
if any other course were adopted, it would necessarily 
involve one or other of these two inconveniences ; 
either that constant explanations must be given, which 
from the very nature of the case, would be utterly 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 



5 



unintelligible to a great proportion of those for whom 
the Bible is unquestionably designed ; or else, that 
being left without such explanations, it would be 
utterly useless for all but those who understood the 
peculiar language employed, who would be simply 
none at all in many ages and countries, and very few 
in any. In either case, the Bible must wait for the 
fulfilment of its manifest purpose, not only until 
scientific discoveries were perfected, but until they 
were so popularized that the technical language in 
which they were described was universally under- 
stood ; and this is certainly not the case in this latter 
half of the 19th century, and we are pretty safe in 
predicting that it never will be the case. Let us just 
imagine an example of the jargon that must be sub- 
stituted for the simple energetic language of the Bible 
if it were translated into the technical phraseology of 
modern science. Take the plain text in the epistle of 
James, "The sun is no sooner risen with burning heat." 
This would have to be expressed in some such way as 
the following, in order to satisfy the demands of our 
modern astronomical science, "The earth has no sooner 
rotated on her axis sufficiently to bring the horizon 
of a place into such a position that its plane will cut 
the heavens at a lower elevation than the sun's!" 
Even this would not indeed satisfy the demands of 
astronomy, for the question wo aid arise whether the 
elevating effects of refraction, and the depressing 
effects of parallax were or were not taken into account ! 
But suppose this difficulty were got over, and the 
expression were allowed to be upon the whole correct 
astronomically, there is a far greater difficulty behind 
with respect to the theories of heat and combustion, 



6 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 



and the phraseology must be modified to suit the ways 
in which modern chemistry accounts for the phenom- 
enon which is popularly called " burning heat." We 
desire to avoid every train of remark which the most 
scrupulous might regard as unsuitable to the place 
and the day ; but really we know of no weapon but 
ridicule wherewith to assail what is simply and only 
ridiculous. 

Certainly the philosophers have no right to find 
fault with the Bible on the ground that it uses the 
language of common men and of common sense in 
alluding to natural phenomena ; for they uniformly 
follow the same course, not only in their intercourse 
with unphilosophic men, but in their communications 
with one another also, excepting, of course, when they 
have occasion actually to set forth the realities, or 
what they suppose to be the realities, as distinct from 
the appearances. 

While the overlooking of this very obvious principle 
has been the cause of a very large amount of the sup- 
position of discrepancy between the Bible and science, it 
ought, we think, in fairness to be admitted that the 
advocates of revelation have been more pertinacious 
in their opposition to it than the advocates of science. 
It was clearly through this oversight that Galileo was 
constrained to abjure his belief in the Copernican 
system, and on his knees to declare that the earth 
stands still, while on his feet he uttered the memor- 
able speech which has passed into a proverb, It does 
move, notwithstanding. Of course we impute this 
humiliating scene exclusively to Bomish bigotry and 
intolerance ; and no doubt the recantation, under the 
threat of perpetual imprisonment or death, was en- 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 7 

tirely a Eomish procedure ; but it ought, in fairness, 
to be stated that the Protestants of those days equally 
charged the adherents of the Copernican system with 
infidelity, because they held that the earth moves, and 
the sun is stationary, in manifest contradiction, as was 
alleged, of the declaration of the nineteenth Psalm, that 
the sun "goeth forth from his chamber in the one end of 
heaven and circleth to the other end thereof." In proof 
of this we need only mention that in an excellent 
Commentary on the prophet Habakkuk, just reprinted 
in this city, there are several pages devoted to the en- 
forcement of this charge. We have considerable re- 
spect for the scrupulousness which led the divines 
of that age, Eomanist and Protestant alike, to stand 
up so strenuously as they did for the absolute literal 
truth of every statement in the Bible, and the abso- 
lute literal accuracy of every one of its allusions. 
They understood, as well as we, that in ordinary 
human language, all kinds of figures are admissible, 
but they seem to have thought that it is inconsistent 
with the idea of inspiration that it should express 
anything but absolute truth, and in absolutely un- 
figurative language. How this imagination could 
have stood with the fact, of which they could not but 
be cognizant, and of which their writings afford abun- 
dant proofs that they were cognizant, that the Bible 
does contain an immense amount of manifestly figu- 
rative language, and that in point of fact all its 
descriptions of the actings of Jehovah, the sight of 
his eyes, the hearing of his ears, the outstretching of 
his arm, must, from the very necessity of the case, be 
figurative, it is not very easy to understand. It is 
certain that more correct ideas are all bat universal 



8 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 

now amongst the advocates of the plenary inspiration 
of the Bible by the God of truth. You may indeed 
still meet, as we have met, with a modern treatise on 
unfulfilled prophecy in which it is gravely maintained 
that there is to be erected upon this earth a city, 
12,000 furlongs long, 12,000 furlongs broad, and 
12,000 furlongs high ! and you may occasionally meet, 
in reading or hearing, with an exposition of the last 
verse of John's Gospel disfigured with a laboured cal- 
culation, showing how much parchment, spread out, 
would cover the habitable part of the surface of the 
globe ; whereas the expositor ought at once, we will 
not say to confess, but to declare and maintain, that 
the Evangelist, under the influence of inspiration, 
made the statement that he supposed the world would 
not contain the books which would suffice to record 
all the mighty works and gracious words of our Lord, 
in precisely the same sense in which any uninspired 
man might have made the same statement ; and that 
inspiration on any other principle would have been a 
great evil instead of a great blessing, inasmuch as its 
interpretation would become a simple impossibility. 

We have dwelt longer upon our first proposition 
than its importance with reference to the present state 
of the controversy may seem to require. It certainly 
was in the past, much more than in the present, that 
the neglect of it led to antagonism between men of 
science and defenders of the Bible as the inspired 
word of God : yet it has not lost its importance as a 
principle, whether of Scripture interpretation or Scrip- 
ture defence, and it is quite possible that it may be 
the ground on which the adjustment of some apparent 
differences is yet to be effected. It is manifestly no part 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 9 

of our present duty to protest against any actual or 
possible perversion or abuse of this principle, whether 
viewed as a principle of interpretation or of defence. 
If it is sound, neither the fact nor the possibility of 
its being perverted or misapplied can make it false ; 
and it is for its sound application, and not for its per- 
version, that we contend. 

II. Our second proposition is that the Bible was 
manifestly not intended to teach us scientific truth. 
It never does formally teach anything relating to 
science at all, and the only way in which it ever 
touches upon scientific matters is by incidental allu- 
sions, in the course of statements with respect to 
matters altogether different, and, we will venture to 
say, unspeakably more important. This is a principle 
which is manifest on the very face of the Bible, and 
yet it has been directly contravened by many in almost 
every age. You may have heard how the Kabbalists 
amongst the Jews not only held, as we do, that the 
Bible is all true ; but they held also this other and 
very different doctrine, which is not true, that the 
Bible contains all truth. In order to make this out 
they expended an amazing amount of perverted and 
misapplied ingenuity, assuming that there is a hidden 
mystery not only in every sentence but in every word 
and letter of the sacred book, and giving a loose rein 
to their fancy in constructing amazing systems of 
science, philosophy and theology, which being com- 
posed of nothing, necessarily were potentially nothing. 
Some of the early Christian fathers showed a tendency 
in the same direction ; and the Bosicrucians and other 
mystics of the middle ages busied themselves in the 



10 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 



same manner, torturing the word of God to make it 
bear testimony to their vain fancies respecting the 
nature and order of the universe. In almost all ages 
there has been exhibited a revival of this idea in one 
form or another ; and in our own country, not very 
long before our own times, it was reduced into a sort 
of system, under the title of the Hutchisonian doc- 
trine. Disciples of this school are still occasionally 
to be met with ; we have happened to know several 
very enthusiastic ones. Now the so constant recur- 
rence of this idea, under so widely different circum- 
stances, would seem to indicate that there is naturally 
an expectation in the minds of men that a divine 
revelation should contain an authoritative exposition 
of science and philosophy. It therefore becomes 
necessary to examine this expectation ; and we think 
that we are prepared to show that it is in the highest 
degree unreasonable. 

First, it is not at first sight an unnatural supposi- 
tion, that a revelation of scientific truth would have 
been a strong recommendation of the Bible to the 
acceptance of man, and would have served a most 
valuable purpose as an evidence of its divine inspira- 
tion. We are fully convinced that it would have been 
just the contrary. Suppose such a book brought to a 
man ignorant of science, and that it began with a 
statement of the truth, that the earth is never at rest, 
but is constantly whirling round its own axis, and at 
the same time revolving in an elliptical orbit round 
the sun. Is it not evident that that man would con- 
sider himself both entitled and bound to reject it at 
once, as containing a statement which he knew to be 
utterly false ? But suppose it were brought to a man 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 11 

who by study had acquired a knowledge of the true 
theory of the earth's motion, or to a community, such 
as ours, throughout which there is diffused a general 
knowledge of that theory, and a general assent to it. 
Is it not certain that when such a man or such a 
community found in an old book a statement of the 
theory which had been arrived at amongst them, as 
the result of a long process of study and investigation, 
their inference would simply be, that the author of 
the book had anticipated the discoveries of Copernicus, 
Kepler, and others, and had arrived at the theory by 
a similar process of investigation to that which had 
conducted them to it. We are confident, therefore, 
that neither in the case of ignorant men, nor in that 
of well instructed and enlightened men, would such 
an announcement have had any value whatever as an 
evidence of divine revelation ; and just as little would 
it have had in the case of men in any intermediate 
state between complete ignorance and full knowledge. 

Secondly, as to the matter of the revelation itself, 
it seems to us very clear, that the mixing up of scien- 
tific with religious truth, would have greatly marred 
the catholicity, damaged the beauty, and lessened the 
utility of the Bible. Physical science, from the very 
necessity of the case, must be, in a great degree, of the 
earth, earthly ; and it is a great matter that in the 
Bible we have our eyes turned constantly and undis- 
tractedlyto the great theme of salvation through the shed 
blood, imputed righteousness, and indwelling Spirit of 
the Son of God. We know how apt we all are to 
degrade this grand theme from the place which it 
occupies in the Bible, and to regard it practically, if 
not theoretically, not as the truth, in comparison of 



12 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 



which all other truths are of insignificant importance, 
but merely as a truth, co-ordinate with, or even sub- I 
ordinate to, multitudes of others. How much more 
liable should we have been to such a perversion, if the 
Bible itself had been so framed as to give countenance 
to such an idea ? As we cannot but feel that it was 
with our blessed Lord Himself, that His glory as a 
teacher of righteousness, and the Saviour of men, stood 
out in all the brighter relief, that it was not associated 
in the days of His flesh with any other glory, that He 
is all the more " the chiefest, among ten thousand, and 
altogether lovely/' in proportion as He " grows up as a 
tender plant, and a root out of a dry ground/' " without 
form or comeliness, or any beauty that we should desire 
Him/' so we feel with respect to the Bible. Some of 
you may remember a grand passage in Pascal's 
Thoughts, in which he distinguishes three orders of 
greatness, viz., physical, intellectual, and moral great- 
ness, or the greatness of holiness. The carnal Jews 
expected the Messiah to come in the merely animal 
greatness of a conqueror, leading forth an irresistible 
army against the hosts of Eome, bathing His sword 
in the blood of His enemies, dethroning Caesar, and 
transferring the seat of empire from Eome to Jeru- 
salem. The Samaritans would appear to have had 
somewhat more refined ideas, and to have fixed their 
thoughts more upon intellectual greatness. Their 
expectation was, that when the Messias came He 
would teach them all things. But when He came His 
utterances were such as these, " I must be about my 
Father's business." "Who made me a judge or a 
divider among you?" " My kingdom is not of this 
world." " I have a baptism to be baptized with, and 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 13 

how am I straitened until it be accomplished V Now, 
what we maintain is this, that as the glory of the in- 
carnate Word, as the appointed king of a kingdom 
not of this world, would have been rather tarnished 
than rendered more illustrious by the addition of 
political or intellectual sovereignty, so it is in its 
measure with the glory of the written word. It gives 
"laws from heaven for life on earth;" but that is only 
because earth is, by the incarnation, and life and death 
of the Son of God, made one with heaven, as man is 
made one with God, and they who are crucified with 
Christ nevertheless live, and the life which they now 
live in the flesh is by the faith of the Son of God, who 
loved them, and gave Himself for them, and their life 
is hid with Christ in God. 

Then, thirdly, as to the influence of an authoritative 
exposition of scientific truth upon science itself, a 
little reflection will show that it would have been 
most injurious to it, in fact destructive of it as science. 
Its very essence consists in investigation, and that 
investigation must be altogether free from authorita- 
tive restraints. We all know that there was, and 
could be, no real science as long as men subjected 
themselves to the authority of Aristotle, and that not 
because Aristotle or the Aristotelians taught erroneous 
doctrines, but because the receiving of any doctrines 
on authority was inconsistent with the very condi- 
tions on which alone science can exist. Accordingly 
Bacon gave existence to science, not by teaching truth 
in opposition to Aristotelian errors, for he taught very 
little positive truth at all, and his writings contain 
probably as many errors as do those of Aristotle ; but 
he gave being to science, because he disclaimed the 



14 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 



authority of Aristotle, and taught men that they must 
study nature, observe her actings, and deduce her laws 
from an extensive observation of her processes. To 
make this all the clearer to such as may not have had 
occasion to think of this subject, let us just look for 
a moment at the simplest of all the sciences, viz., the 
mathematical. Suppose that in teaching the elements 
of geometry, instead of placing before the learner the 
steps and processes by which the propositions are 
proved, and requiring him to go over every step of 
the proof, and make it, so far as possible, an act of his 
own mind ; suppose that instead of this we were to 
place before him only the enunciations of the pro- 
positions, and assure him that they are all true, and 
that he must believe them ; — could we by any possi- 
bility take a more effective mode of securing that he 
should never become a mathematician ? Now it is at 
least equally so with respect to the more complicated 
branches of science, and the evil would be still greater 
if we were required to receive them on the more con- 
straining and unquestionable authority of a divine 
revelation. 

Let us now point out how this consideration bears 
upon our general subject. It is fitted to modify, and 
as we believe, to correct, the expectation which many 
have formed, and which probably all of us have a 
natural tendency to form, of finding many confirma- 
tions of Bible statements in the results of scientific 
research. It is very common to say that the book of 
nature and the book of revelation, being the works of 
one and the same author, must necessarily bear marks 
of that common authorship. Now this is true ; but 
then it must not be forgotten that, if they may both 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 15 



be called books, they are books on entirely different 
subjects. While, therefore, we may confidently 
expect that they shall not contain statements or senti- 
ments mutually contradictory, we have clearly no 
right to expect that they should contain any consider- 
able portion of matter in common. We question if 
any critic could have found out, from internal evi- 
dences alone, that the " Treatise on the Freedom of 
the Will," and the " Narrative of Eevivals in New 
England " are the products of one mind ; yet no one 
ever thought of doubting that Jonathan Edwards 
wrote them both. Now if this be fair and reasonable, 
and if aught else would be unreasonable and unfair, 
in judging of the writings of a human author, whose 
ideas and knowledge and modes of expression are 
necessarily limited ; of course it is abundantly more 
so with respect to the Divine author, who is far less 
likely to repeat himseif, being able, out of his infinite 
resources, to introduce into his works a variety no 
less than infinite. 

A positive service which we think that this part of 
our argument renders to the cause, is one that we had 
in view when we said in our introduction, that there 
might arise a positive evidence, or at least a strong 
presumption, of the divine inspiration of the Bible, 
from some parts of our argument. We have seen how 
general is the expectation, that a divine revelation 
should contain a system of science. Those who have 
professed to be the vehicles of revelation have known 
of the existence of this expectation in others, and have 
been conscious of it in themselves ; and all of them, 
with the exception of the writers of the Bible, have 
undertaken to fulfil that expectation. Accordingly, 



16 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 



we find that Loth the Yedas and the Puranas of the 
Hindoos, the Zendavesta of Zoroaster, the sacred books 
of the Chinese, the Koran of Mohammed, as well as 
the miserable and blasphemous utterances of the 
Mormonites, the Clairvoyants, and the Spiritualists of 
our own day, are filled with statements of the views 
of their several authors, respecting the constitution 
and laws of the physical world. Now, to us it does 
appear that the fact, that no one of the fifty writers of 
the Bible has given forth a single utterance of his 
views on any of these subjects, is altogether unac- 
countable on any supposition but one ; and that one 
is, that these men wrote not according to the un- 
prompted and unrestrained tendencies of their own 
minds, but that they wrote under the influence of 
the supernatural guidance of the Spirit of God, which 
we call inspiration. 

III. Our next proposition is, that the past relations 
between the Bible and science are fitted to inspire the 
advocates of inspiration with confidence. From the 
days when the infidel sadducees disputed with our 
blessed Lord, from the time when the synagogue of 
the Libertines arose and disputed with Stephen, from 
the time when the Epicureans and Stoics encountered 
with Paul on Mars Hill, we have had a long succes- 
sion of Celsuses, and Porphyries, and Cardans, who 
have from time to time waged a desultory guerilla 
warfare with the gospel and the Bible, until the siege 
was regularly laid to the citadel by the Encyclopedists 
of France, in the end of the past century and begin- 
ning of the present. While we may, and do regret, 
that so much fine talent was wasted, and far worse 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 17 

than merely wasted, while we regret that the minds of 
Christians have been disturbed, and the minds of en- 
quirers distracted, by objections of which they could 
not estimate the value or the force, we have only cause 
for rejoicing, that the Bible has come out of every 
encounter unwounded and unsullied. We remember 
at the distance of thirty years, and shall not forget if we 
live thirty more, the thrill with which we heard from 
the lips of Dr. Chalmers, a burst of noble eloquence on 
this subject, which now forms part of the preface to 
vol. v. of his Works. We must confine our quotation 
to the concluding sentences. " We are not aware of 
a single science in the vast Encyclopaedia of human 
knowledge, which has not, in some shape or other, 
been turned, by one or more of its perverse disciples, 
into an instrument of hostility against the gospel of 
Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, it too has an evidence of 
its own, alike unassailable, and beyond the reach of 
violence from without. It is not by the hammer of 
the mineralogist that this evidence can be broken. It 
is not by the telescope of the astronomer that we can 
be made to descry in it any character of falsehood. 
It is not by the knife of the anatomist that we can 
find our way to the alleged rottenness which lies at 
its core. Most ridiculous of all, it is not by his re- 
cently invented cranioscope that the phrenologist can 
take the dimensions of it, and find them to be utterly 
awanting. And lastly may it be shown that it is 
not by a dissecting metaphysics that the philosopher 
of the human mind can probe his way to the secret of 
its insufficiency, and make exposure to the world of 
the yet unknown flaw which incurably vitiates and 
irreparably condemns either the proofs or the subject- 

B 



18 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 

matter of the Christian faith. All these sciences have 
at one time or other, cast their missiles at the stately 
fabric of our Christian philosophy and erudition ; but 
they have fallen impotent at its base. They have 
offered insult, but done no injury, save to the defence- 
less youth whose principles they have subverted, or 
to those men of ambitious vanity, yet imperfect educa- 
tion, whose 'little learning is a dangerous thing.'" 
If the noble author of this passage had been still 
spared to lift up his grand voice in the midst of us, 
we can well imagine the splendid indignation with 
which he would have rebuked the presumption of the 
bishop of Natal, in bringing to the encounter with this 
hero of a thousand victories the squared ranks of the 
multiplication table, fondly dreaming that the Chris- 
tian faith, like a wearied House of Commons, could 
be simply counted out ! We can imagine the high- 
souled withering scorn with which he would have cast 
off and cast back the foul insult offered by a few of 
the physiologists and anthropologists of our day, who 
would put our faith out of countenance by the grin- 
nings of the chimpanzee, or frighten it out of being 
by the roarings of the gorilla ! 

IV. That our augury of the future from the history 
of the past is not too sanguine, we think we shall be 
able to make apparent, under a fourth proposition, 
which is, that the objections now made by science 
against the Bible are neither numerous nor formid- 
able. In order to evince this, we shall briefly allude 
to what may be called the outstanding objections pro- 
pounded in connection with the several sciences. 
Probably most of you expected that we should occupy 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 19 

the whole or the greater part of our lecture with this, 
and may be disappointed that we only bring it in at 
the close ; but we have thought it better to dwell 
upon principles than to enter very minutely into 
details. 

We mention first astronomy, because it is at once 
the noblest, and the exactest, and most accurate of the 
sciences. One charge connected with the history of 
this science has been most satisfactorily demonstrated 
by the science itself to have been unfounded. We 
allude to the conclusions that were deduced from the 
Hindoo' and Chinese astronomical tables regarding 
chronology. The Hindoo tables profess to contain 
records of astronomical observations from 3102 years 
B.C., or about 700 years before the flood. Now we 
have the unhesitating testimony, not of an ignorant 
advocate of inspiration, but of Laplace himself, that 
these records are entirely spurious, that their errors 
show them to have been calculated back from a com- 
paratively recent date. It is also certain that by far 
the oldest of the Hindoo astronomical treatises makes 
mention of a city called Eomaka, far to the west of 
India. There can be no reasonable doubt that the 
reference is to Borne, and consequently that the 
Surjya Siddhanta was not written until the days of 
Eome's greatness. 

Some astronomers have objected to the miracle re- 
corded in the book of J oshua, of the standing still of 
the sun and the moon, that this would have deranged 
the whole cosmical order of the universe. Now we 
might say that the question just reduces itself to the 
other question, whether there can be a miracle at all. 
If God could work the miracle as described, he could 



20 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 



surely obviate the inconveniencies that might have 
ensued from it. But it is remarkable that the objec- 
tion proceeds upon an erroneous assumption altogether. 
It is assumed that for the production of the phenome- 
non it was necessary that the earth's re volution round 
the sun should be suspended, whereas all that was re- 
quired was a suspension of her rotation on her axis. 
This would not affect the other bodies of the system at all, 
and if the rotation were brought to a stay somewhat 
gradually, would not even produce any concussion on 
the earth's surface. Of course, there is nothing in the 
record inconsistent with the supposition that this 
miracle might be in the department of optics rather 
than in that of astronomy. It is quite supposable that 
a change in the atmosphere, effected by the command 
of God, may have caused it to reflect the sun and moon 
after they were actually below the horizon. 

But a more serious, because a more fundamental 
objection than this has been brought against the Bible 
and the gospel in connection with this science. It is 
to the effect that astronomy has so evinced the stu- 
pendous magnitude of the universe, as to make it in- 
conceivable that the Son of God should have been 
incarnate, and should have died under the curse, for 
the redemption of inhabitants of one of the smallest 
and most insignificant of its worlds. You know that 
this is the objection which Dr Chalmers dealt with in 
his wonderful Astronomical Sermons, and dealt wdth it 
so as to leave it no logical standing-place. We shall 
only say regarding this matter that it is wonderful, 
passing all wonder ; but this only shews the more 
distinctly that the love of God passeth all understand- 
ing. It is nowise inconsistent with the scriptural re- 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 21 

presentation of the matter, which tells us that Christ 
laid not hold of the angelical nature, but of the seed 
of Abraham, and even amongst the inhabitants of 
earth themselves he chooseth not the great, the mighty, 
the learned, the noble; but " he hath chosen the foolish 
things of the world to confound the wise, the weak 
things of the world to confound the mighty ; and base 
things of the world, and things which are despised 
hath he chosen, yea, things which are not, to bring to 
nought things which are, that no flesh should glory in 
his presence/' 

It is only now, when we come to notice the geolo- 
gical objections to the narrative of the creation, that 
we are disposed to regret the plan that we have 
adopted in this lecture, as we should have particularly 
liked, and we believe it would have been instructive, 
to notice them in some detail. We dare not, however, 
presume upon your patience further than to glance at 
the past history and present state of the controversy. 
For a time after geological observations began to be 
systematically made, the students of the science were 
divided into two classes — those who argued that the 
crust of the globepresents numberless indications that it 
must have been created at a period greatly more remote 
than the Scripture chronology would seem to indicate, 
and those who held that the strata afford confirma- 
tions of the Scripture account of the six days' work ; 
while the fossils embedded in them, and especially the 
remains of marine animals found at great elevations, 
furnish a demonstration of the universal deluge re- 
corded in the Scriptures. But the arguments in favour 
of the former view gradually accumulated until they 
commanded all but the universal assent of geo- 



22 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 

logists. It is now admitted by all intelligent men ] 
that the matter of our globe was called into being very i ] 
much more than 6000 years ago, and the books that 
were written at the commencement of the controversy 
on Scriptural Geology have fallen into oblivion. But 
two modes of interpreting the narrative of the first 
chapter of Genesis were suggested, which had each, 
and which have even to this day, their several de- 
fenders. They are inconsistent with each other, and 
cannot be both correct ; but we think we may say 
that there is no intelligent man now who does not be- 
lieve that the one or the other is correct. The one is 
that which supposes the six days of the creation to 
have been long periods of time. We do not know who ! 
was the first propounder of this theory. We first met 
with it in the writings of the late Dr Stanley Eaber, I 
whose immense learning and wonderful ingenuity I 
converted us to the acceptance of it. This theory the 
late Hugh Miller may be said to have made peculi- 
arly his own. He defended it with an amount of 
geological science, and illustrated it with a radiance 
of poetical beauty, such as were probably never 
before united in a scientific work. The other theory 
was propounded by Dr. Chalmers just half a century 
ago, and has been adopted and advocated by Buck- 
land, Sedgwick, and other eminent geologists. 
According to this view, the narrative in the first 
chapter of Genesis divides itself into two, or perhaps 
more properly into three parts. The first verse tells 
us that in the beginning, that is, at some period 
which may be indefinitely remote, the heavens and 
the earth were created by the word of God. Then 
the second verse informs us that at a subsequent 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 23 

period the earth was reduced to a state of chaos ; it 
may be, by some convulsion, which may not have 
been the first, or the tenth, or the hundredth which 
had taken place from "the beginning and that then the 
Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters, to con- 
vert the chaos once more into a cosmos, and then the 
arrangement of the present order of things began 
and was completed in six days. It cannot be denied 
that this may be the meaning of the Scriptural narra- 
tive, and when we become a little accustomed to con- 
template it in this light, it not only seems to do no 
violence to the narrative, but to be in fact its most 
natural interpretation. The historian has to do not 
with the earth either in its astronomical or geological 
relations, but simply as the habitation of man, whose 
history he is to record. A single sentence suffices to 
account for the earth's being in existence, and another 
to account for the necessity of a new organisation of 
it ; and then he proceeds to give an account of this 
organisation, with which alone his subject gave him 
any concern. It is quite evident that either of these 
modes of interpretation completely neutralizes the 
geological objection as it then was, inasmuch as, 
according to the one, all the changes which geology 
shews to have taken place in the earth's crust may 
have occurred during the six periods which the 
author of the Book of Genesis calls days ; and accord- 
ing to the other, they may have occurred in the 
interval which elapsed between the beginning, when 
the matter of the earth was created, and the first of 
the six days when that matter began to be arranged 
substantially as we now find it. 

Neither is it any good argument against the truth 



24 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 

of the Scriptural narrative, that geology proves that 
there was death in the world numberless ages before 
man was in it, whereas the Bible represents that 
death is the wages of sin, that it was the sin of man 
that made the creation subject to vanity, that 
"brought death unto the world, and all our woe/ It 
was indeed the sin of man that brought death into 
his world, which is our world, but why may not there 
have been sin in the previous worlds which were 
constructed of the same materials, but of which the 
Bible gives no account? Yea, does not the Bible 
itself allude in the very next chapter to sin existing 
somewhere in the universe before the creation of man, 
and why may it not have been committed in the earth 
that then was ? May not the earth in some one of its 
previous conditions have been the habitation of Satan 
and his hosts, and may not this have been one reason 
of his fell malignity against those who succeeded him 
in his tenancy? Is it not possible that both the 
angels that fell, and the angels that stood, may have 
had their dwelling-place during a period of probation 
in this province of their Lord's boundless dominions; 
and that those who stood may have been removed into 
a place where God's presence is more specially mani- 
fested, prepared for them and for the redeemed of 
men before the foundation of the world, where they 
have been made secure for ever in virtue of the 
covenant established with Him, of whom the whole 
family both in heaven and in earth is named, and 
whose prerogative it is, by the appointment of his 
Father, to " gather together in one all things, both 
which are in heaven and which are in earth,'' even 
Him, "in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 25 

oeing predestinated according to the purpose of him 
who worketh all things after the counsel of his own 
will while those who fell, even the devil and his 
angels, were hurried off to a place of outer darkness, 
a lake of everlasting fire, prepared for them by their 
offended Lord ? May not the song of the morning 
stars, and the shout of the sons of God, when they 
saw the earth prepared for the habitation of men, 
have been all the more jubilant because its creation 
was substantially the refitting of an abode endeared 
to them by innumerable blissful associations ? May 
not the malignity of the tempter have been intensified 
and envenomed by the thought that the new race 
was to occupy the place which he had once regarded 
as peculiarly his own ? This is of course only specu- 
lation, and we found no argument upon it. 

When the modes of interpretation of the first chapter 
of Genesis to which we have referred were propounded, 
it was admitted by the common consent of geologists, 
that the existence of man upon the earth is compara- 
tively of recent date, and so far, science was under- 
stood to confirm rather than contradict the scriptural 
narrative. It is only within a few months that a 
geologist of any note has ventured to assail this posi- 
tion, and we venture to assert that a feebler assault 
was never made. We have no hesitation in saying, 
that Sir Charles Lyell's book on the Antiquity of man 
is one of the most un-Baconian productions that ever 
proceeded from a scientific man. One premise in 
each of his twenty arguments is indeed a fact, but the 
other is an assumption, and all of these assumptions 
are purely gratuitous, while several are notoriously 
and demonstrably false. 



26 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 

Closely akin in their intention and in their character 
to the geological arguments of Sir Charles Lyell for 
the antiquity of man, are those which Bunsen and 
others have founded upon Egyptian monuments and 
inscriptions. They are simply bold, assertions, and 
wild conjectures, without any foundation to rest upon, 
supported by the process of collecting and magnifying 
all evidence that seems to support a foregone conclu- 
sion, and resolutely excluding all that tends to over- 
throw that conclusion. It will be admitted, that there 
could not be a more unexceptionable judge on this 
subject, than the late Sir G-. C. Lewis, and with a 
sentence or two from him we shall dismiss the subject. 
" Egyptology/' says Sir George, " has a historical 
method of its own. It recognizes none of the ordinary 
rules of evidence ; the extent of its demands upon 
our credulity is almost unbounded. Even the writers 
on ancient Italian ethnology are modest and tame in 
their hypotheses, compared with the Egyptologists. 
Under their potent logic all identity disappears, every 
thing is subject to become any thing but itself. Suc- 
cessive dynasties become contemporary dynasties ; 
[contemporary become successive ?] ; one kingbecomes 
another king, or several other kings, or a fraction of 
another king ; one name becomes another name, one 
number becomes another number, one place becomes 
another place." May we not safely affirm, that it is 
not weapons such as these, forged in the work-shop of 
a diseased brain, composed of the materials whereof 
sick men's dreams are made, that shall ever prosper 
against our faith or its records ? 

When we were speaking of astronomical objections, 
we passed over in silence what was called the nebular 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 27 

hypothesis, which held that the universe consisted 
originally of atoms or particles of matter in a state of 
fire-dust or nebula, that this matter was in the course 
of millions of ages collected by the action of gravita- 
tion into masses, which gradually formed themselves 
into worlds and systems, and that upon the surfaces 
of these worlds plants and animals were formed by the 
action of similar laws ; that this process has been 
going on probably for millions of millions of years, 
and is going on still. We passed over this in silence, 
because it has not only been long abandoned as an 
astronomical theory, but has been abundantly confuted 
by the advance of astronomical knowledge, and par- 
ticularly by the increased power of our modern tele- 
scopes, which show that the nebulae are not fire-dust 
out of which suns and worlds are to be made, but 
suns actually shining in countless numbers and amaz- 
ing splendour. "We refer to the theory now, because 
of its close connection with that of Lamarck, who held 
that all varieties of plants and animals had been 
developed from a monad by a process of wishing, 
continued through innumerable ages. Thus a particle 
of inert matter longed for life, and became a moss ; 
the moss became a sponge, half vegetable, half animal ; 
wishing for a protection from the dashing waves it made 
for itself shell, and became a limpet ; disliking its con- 
finement on a rock, it longed for means of locomotion, 
it got free, and became a fish ; wishing to see what 
was doing in other elements, it longed for wings, and 
became first a flying fish, and then a bird. Finding 
that its wings, while admirably fitted for motion through 
the air, were not suited to aid materially its progress 
upon earth, it got them converted into legs and feet, in 



28 THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 



addition to the two that it had before. But while the 
bird could fly, and the quadruped could run, neither 
of them was very specially fitted for climbing, and so 
the four feet were converted into four hands. Then 
however, it was found that a mistake had been com- 
mitted. Hands were, doubtless, very good things, 
but there might be too many of them, especially if 
they were purchased at the expense of feet, and so 
the monkey exchanged two of his hands for feet, 
while he retained the other two, and so he became a 
man. It was only further necessary that he should 
get a soul, and that also he got by wishing for it. 
We are not sure that anybody ever seriously believed 
in this theory, or regarded it as aught else than an 
ingenious mode of exhibiting, by way of fable or alle- 
gory, the singular analogies that pervade the vegetable 
and animal kingdoms. But a few years ago both the 
nebular theory of astronomy, and the development 
theory of species, were set forth anew in a book which 
excited a considerable amount of attention at the time 
of its publication, the "Vestiges of the Natural History 
of Creation.'' Since that time the theory of the trans- 
mutation of species, which is just Lamarck's theory of 
development, divested of some of its more ridiculous 
aspects, has been advocated with great ingenuity by 
Dr Darwin, while Mr Huxley and others have at- 
tempted, in confirmation of it, to prove the generic 
identity of man with the higher order of monkeys. 
Now, in answer to all this, it is enough to say that 
there is not a single fact on which the hypothesis 
rests. There is no record of any one of all the innu- 
merable changes which the hypothesis requires. True, 
they are supposed to require innumerable ages for 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE, 29 

their perfecting, but in every particular age there 
ought to be many in all stages of progress. How is 
it then that we do not find them actually beginning, 
and going on and terminating ? It is easy to suppose 
that such an order of things might have been, but it 
is abundantly certain that it is not the actually exist- 
ing order of things. 

We have been speaking of a hypothesis which 
dispenses with Adam altogether; we need do no 
more than refer to one which requires a dozen 
Adams. Dr Darwin's theory would make all the 
races of man of one species originally with the 
monkeys, the other would make each of the varieties 
of the human race a distinct species, descended from 
a different ancestor. This theory was confessedly 
originated in America with a view to getting rid of the 
" difficulty," with respect to the negro race ; and as 
that difficulty has been happily got over otherwise, 
the theory itself will pass away and be forgotten. We 
cannot but mention, however, how satisfactorily it is 
confuted, and the Scriptural history of the unity of 
mankind, and the dispersion at Babel, is confirmed by 
another science, the science of philology. Such men 
as Bopp and Max Muller have established, on a de- 
monstrative basis, that the languages of men were 
originally one, and that they were broken into several 
by a violent and sudden cause. These several have 
branched out gradually into all the different dialects 
that have been spoken in the world. 

Thus, brethren, have we shown that there is no in- 
consistency between the Bible and true science. Any 
supposed inconsistencies that we have not noticed, we 



SO THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 

have not shrunk from because they were too formid- 
able to be grappled with, but because they were too 
trifling to deserve notice. "We have done more than 
this. We have shown that it is infant science alone, 
that is to say imperfect and inaccurate science, that is 
inconsistent with the Bible, while, in proportion as 
science is corrected, it is brought round to harmony 
with the holy oracles. Thus we may apply to the 
Bible what Lord Bacon said, long ago, respecting 
natural religion and the existence of God ; " A little 
philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but 
depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to 
religion.'' And now we conclude, as we are quite 
conscious that we ought to have done ere now, by sug- 
gesting two reflections of a practical character. 

1. The first is this : that we are not to hold by our 
Bible as in a state of suspense, as if the next morn- 
ing's newspaper, or the next month's scientific maga- 
zine might tear it from our grasp, and prove to us 
that it is no Bible at all. We have strenuously 
excluded from our discussion the argument from 
authority ; but here, we think, it may legitimately 
find a place. It would be no answer to any particular 
objection from astronomy, to say that Newton was, 
and that Herschell is, a believer in the Bible ; or to 
any particular geological objection, to assert that Hugh 
Miller read with as much reverence the word of God 
as he did the works of God ; or to any particular ob- 
jection, derived from physiology, to say that John 
Abercrombie regarded it as no less an honour to be 
a humble learner in the school of Christ, than to be a 
great teacher of all that man can discover of the 
mysteries of man's being ; or to any particular objec- 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 31 

tion derived from the department of chemistry, to say 
that George Wilson found in the simple faith of Christ 
a peace in the midst of his sore sufferings which the 
world, with all its mines of knowledge open, could not 
give ; but we submit that it is a fair inference from 
such facts as these, with reference to objections of 
whose force we have not the means of judging, that 
we may wait with perfect security for the adjustment 
of differences which did not prevent these, and such- 
like men, from being at once very " learned and very 
pious." 

2. Our second reflection may be attached to this 
very expression which we have just employed. It is 
that there is no foundation for the prevalent idea that 
there is a natural antagonism between scientific pur- 
suits and religion, and that religious men look with 
some sort of jealousy upon the votaries of science. 
No ; we know that ignorance is not the mother of any 
devotion that is worthy of the name. We wish very 
earnestly that all the learned were devout, and we 
wish, if it v/ere possible, that all the devout were 
learned too. We know there is such a thing as un- 
sanctified knowledge, but we know there is such a 
thing also as unsanctified ignorance ; and without car- 
ing to decide which of these two is worse, we have no 
scruple or difficulty in averring that at all events sanc- 
tified knowledge is far better than even sanctified ig- 
norance. We hail and rejoice in the advance of 
science, not only because we hold that knowledge is in 
itself far better than ignorance, civilisation than bar- 
barism ; but, in addition, because we are persuaded 
that every advance in science, by whomsoever made, 
shall be in the end an additional contribution to the 



32 



THE BIBLE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH SCIENCE. 



glory of our exalted Lord. When the kings of Tarshish 
and the isles shall bring presents unto him, and the 
kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts ; yea, when 
all kings shall fall down before him, there shall not 
be wanting those true kings of men, those men 
of ruling intellect, who, according to Lord Bacon's 
description of the highest end of science, have contri- 
buted to the recovery of man s lost dominion over na-j 
ture. The anthem of praise which, arising from, a 
multitude whom no man can number, shall be like 
the ceaseless roar of ocean's ever-rolling waves, shall 
be composed not wholly of the untutored accents of 
the tenants of the rock, but with these shall bej 
mingled in sweetest symphony the polished notes of 
those whose intellects have been expanded, and their 
tastes refined, and their souls elevated by the lofty 
contemplations of science. Jealous of scientific pur- 
suits ! Why, we know that science in all her laboratories 
is but fabricating for our Lord one of the most grace- 
ful and resplendent of all the many crowns which shall 
be on his head in the day of his completed glory. To 
this end — 

" Science is but his factor, 
To engross up glorious deeds cn his behalf ; 
And he will call her to so strict account, 
That she shall render every glory up ; " — 

And then herself, having paid her willing tribute, shall 
sit at his feet to hear his word, or wait as a humble 
handmaid to execute his behests, esteeming it as her 
highest honour that she is permitted to honour Him. 



ON THE 



PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 

BY 

ROBERT RAINY, D.D., 



PROFESSOR OP DIVINITY AND CHURCH HISTORY, NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH. 



II.— (fit % }|Ia« anfr drafts of piracies* 

The subject which I have chosen does not impose on 
me the obligation to discuss from end to end the 
argument concerning miracles, and the difficulties 
which men have chosen to raise about them. I have 
only undertaken to illustrate how miracles fit into 
God's ways of dealing with our minds and hearts. 
And my object in undertaking this, is to do something 
to fortify the mind against a vague doubt, not unfre- 
quently suggested now-a-days by those who do not 
choose to come forth with an explicit denial. I find, 
however, that it will be necessary for me to glance at 
the general argument, before I pass to my more 
especial theme ; for it is desirable to indicate what 
place my subject holds in the general argument, and 
how it stands related to other considerations. This 
must be my apology for touching rapidly on various 
branches of the subject, which it is impossible to dis- 
cuss fully, impossible almost even to represent fairly 
within the limits which I must observe. 

Eighteen hundred years ago and more, a great 
teacher appeared in Judea. The people of the Jews 
among whom he appeared, was a people distinguished 

c 



34 ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIEACLES. 

by the remarkable character of its religious history. 
They were the only nation on the earth that held the 
faith and worship of one God, Infinite and Almighty, 
and that had joined with it a practical persuasion of His 
present and particular providence, and of near relations 
to men assumed and borne by Him. They believed 
that He had been dealing with them for many ages ; 
and certainly along the line of their remarkable history 
there had arisen successively great teachers, claiming 
a divine mission, and uttering a series of splendid 
prophecies. Moreover, in their own opinion and be- 
lief, their religious history was still unfinished, the 
dealings of God with them were still in progress. 
The religion which they cherished, the worship that 
had been delivered to them, the prophetic messages 
which they had received, had this peculiarity, that 
they were all, and always, expectant. The people 
were thrown upon the future. God, who had been 
dealing with them, w 7 as yet further to unfold His 
character and will, in other greater interpositions. 
The splendid history of the past was only leading up, 
through the hopes and yearnings of the present, to a 
more consummate future. So they were led to join, 
with all their present service, a peculiar spirit of 
waiting ; and that which they waited for, was to prove 
the consolation of Israel. Such was their hope. 

That past history of theirs had been marked accord- 
ing to their historians, among other things, by miracles 
or mighty acts of the Lord. These were not confined 
to narrow periods of the history ; rather, they were 
found more or less attaching to the whole. Yet two 
principal masses might be singled out, connected with 
two great eras. The one was the time of Moses and 



i 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 35 

Joshua, when the people received their institutions, 
and were led into their land. The other was that of 
Elijah and Elisha, when the authority of their insti- 
tutions, and the majesty of their God, were vindicated 
and restored to honour. Those mighty acts were 
wrought in general in connection with the ministry, 
and at the hand of men ; they marked those men as 
messengers from God, and they betokened the em- 
phasis and peculiarity of divine care bestowed on the 
people in whose behalf they were wrought. On these 
great recollections the people reposed, waiting for the 
manifestations yet to come. 

Among them, then, there appeared at length that 
great teacher, Jesus. He was mighty in word : He 
was also mighty in deed. Of Him it is recorded, that 
He wrought many miracles, mighty works and signs. 
All who followed Him testified that He did so. He 
Himself appealed to them in evidence of His authority 
as sent from God. Nor is there the slightest trace of 
the reality of those remarkable events having been 
denied by His contemporaries, who had access to in- 
formation on the subject ; nor yet that His works 
had at all a tentative character, sometimes succeeding 
and sometimes failing. Moreover, as He wrought 
many mighty works during His ministry, so it closed 
w 7 ith the greatest miracle of all. For, having been 
rejected, and as rejected, put to death by His country- 
men, He rose again the third day ; and forty days 
afterwards He was seen ascending into the heavens, 
by His assembled disciples. 

This coming of our Lord with signs and — "ers 
throws a light back on the whole course of the previ- 
ous history, with its signs ; that was preparing His 



36 ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIKACLES. 

way. And it throws a light forward also, inasmuch 
as it prepares and establishes our hearts in the 
expectation of one conclusive mighty work, which we; 
still await, — even our Lord's return from the heavens,, 
the resurrection and judgment of quick and dead! 
at His appearing. 

Concerning miracles, then, and concerning those; 
ascribed to our Lord in particular, questions have; 
often been raised, and objections proposed. ( The 
nature of the objection and the ground of it have: 
never varied materially. It is always based on the 
unlikeness of miracles to what we see around us,, 
on their startlingly exceptional character, as contrasted 
with the constancy of nature and her laws. In truth,, 
it is simply the application to the miracles of Scrip- 
ture of that familiar feeling, in virtue of which, any 
of you going out in the afternoon to take a walk, feels 
pretty sure that he is not likely to meet with any 
miracles before he comes home again. The substance 
of the objection, I repeat, has never varied ; but the 
way of putting it has. At present we have it pro- 
pounded and pressed, broadly and unequivocally, by 
one class of reasoners. But there are many persons 
who, either from a recollection of the vigour with 
which such objections have been met heretofore, or 
from an idea that an objection veiled often does more 
work than an objection displayed, seem more disposed 
to put it obliquely, so to say, than directly. They 
say that every day furnishes us with a more precise 
acquaintance with the facts and laws of nature. And 
this inevitable advance in our views of nature and 
the world, tends to render the very idea of a miracle 
more and more anomalous and incongruous. That 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIEACLES. 37 

idea must more and more rank with the antiquated 
and exploded notions which were entertained once, 
but cannot be easily entertained any more. There- 
fore, it is suggested, it may be as well to inquire 
whether it is of any great importance that we should 
continue to give it a place in our minds ; and whether 
Christianity in our days may not dispense with all con- 
cern about the matter, and all responsibility for it. 
Now, in point of fact, it is further said, one may be 
comforted to find that on a just view of things, this 
is precisely what results. Whatever miracles, or 
events so called, might do or mean for men of a past 
age, they are, for Christians now, entirely extraneous 
and superfluous. They are not useful, it is said, for 
the purpose of supporting our faith, for our faith may 
rest on the general excellence of Christianity, con- 
sidered as involving a worthy tone of mind, and lead- 
ing to nobility of conduct and life. Nay, instead of 
miracles grounding a faith in anything else, they 
require faith in order to believe in them, and that 
much more than the doctrines which they are said 
to support. And then, they are not now fitted either 
to be objects of contemplation or sources of instruc- 
tion. We ought rather to refuse to let mere wonders 
like these occupy our minds. There might be a stage 
when people could usefully contemplate a truth in 
the garb of a wonder, but we now-a-days w^ould do 
better to contemplate exclusively the moral or 
spiritual principle in itself, that alone can be con- 
sidered to have within it a value, and permanent 
importance. So then we may peacefully lay miracles 
aside, we may be willing to let questions about them 
settle themselves as they can, secure that nothing 



38 ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIEACLES." 

that bears on such a point can b§ for us, as Chris- 
tians, modern Christians, a matter of any great im- 
portance. 

This line is taken by a certain number of persons 
who profess and who believe themselves to be Chris- 
tians, and who do not wish to be understood as 
attacking Christianity. Others again do not go so 
far as the views and statements I have adduced ; but 
they are more or less uncomfortable and perplexed, 
either because they believe there is some force in the 
difficulty, or because they are aware that others think 
so. Others of course who renounce Christianity, take 
advantage of these views to make a more unqualified 
or at least a more frank and open application of them. 
It is because such things are put abroad, that I have 
undertaken to say something upon the subject to- 
night. 

And first, men delude themselves, who profess to 
retain Christianity, and yet to be indifferent about 
miracles, or ready to renounce belief in them, as if 
they were a kind of garnishing and nothing more. I 
shall not illustrate this position by dwelling on the 
necessity of miracles to certify us of the Divine 
character of the revelation that comes to us, although 
I believe that for this purpose miracles have a place 
which cannot be supplied in any other way. Nor 
shall I dwell on the kind of conception with respect 
to God and religion which miracles announce, and 
for which they prepare us ; though this also is rele- 
vant here. But I rely simply on the consideration, 
that the very central articles of Christianity cannot 
be confessed without confessing miracles. That 
Christ was supernaturally conceived and born, and 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 39 

was on the earth Tmmanuel, God with us ; that after 
three days he rose again ; and that bye and bye He 
ascended up into heaven in the presence of His dis- 
ciples ; these are miracles the greatest and most 
stupendous. If these are denied our faith is vain. 
If they are admitted, then the question of miracles 
is settled, for what objection can be laid against the 
other miracles that would not first apply to these. 
To speak therefore of resigning the miraculous 
element, and retaining our religion notwithstanding, 
is either a delusion or a snare. If we are to assert 
Christianity we are to assert miracles. And if the 
advancing spirit of the age is to antiquate miracles, 
and make them practically incredible, then it is 
Christianity itself which this spirit of the age is 
moving out of the way. 

But, secondly, let us see what it is that is relied 
upon as either formally and logically excluding 
miracles, or as practically putting them out of the 
question. It is the advance of science, as it is seen 
reducing all things to laws, and turning every pheno- 
menon into a fresh illustration of the constancy of 
nature, which constancy knows no exception, and 
discloses no hint of any. That is the lever they work 
with. Now as to this, one thing is perfectly certain, 
viz., that no recent discoveries, no recent progress in 
the details of science, or in the correlation of its de- 
partments, can have even the least bearing on the 
question now before us. Whatever force may be in 
the argument against miracles from the constancy of 
nature, no recent discoveries have made that argu- 
ment one whit better or worse ; none has affected in 
any way the difficulties said to arise in that quarter. 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 



A hundred years ago, the argument was precisely the i 
same as it is to-day, and the answers to it were not j 
founded on anything on which the progress of science 1 
can exert any influence. The constancy of na^ 
ture, as alleged here, we may suppose, implies that 
the qualities of natural objects, or the forces which 
those qualities imply, always manifest themselves in 
the like circumstances, and so as to fulfil or exemplify 
the same laws of working. So we find it in our ex- 
perience ; and so, we may presume, we are to find it. 
On the assumption of this general principle the in- 
vestigations of scientific men proceed. Now this prin- 
ciple has been perfectly familiar for generations, and 
could not be enhanced in point of evidence or preci- 
sion by any progress of science. It was perfectly well 
understood long ago, that this must be the assumption 
at the foundation of all progress in human knowledge. 
All that has recently been done simply affords fresh * 
illustrations of it, illustrations which were confidently 
expected to arise in the same proportion as phenomena 
should be analysed and resolved. These illustrations 
have added neither range nor force to any principle 
that is available in this argument. It is vain to pre- 
tend to be, on this particular point, more advanced 
than our great-grandfathers. 

The truth is, that the recent advances of science, 
and the increasing number of facts reduced to law, 
have had, in connection with our argument, just one 
legitimate effect, and no more. It has added nothing 
to the principle on which correct thinkers have been 
dealing with nature for generations, but it has modified 
legitimately and advantageously some popular impres- 
sions. There were impressions on the popular mind, 



'on the place and ends of mieacles. 41 

as though some departments of nature were to be re- 
garded as in some degree the domain of chance ; as 
though in these the chain of causes were more loosely- 
knit, and as though an element of inherent uncertainty 
and precariousness, and therefore a region of caprice, 
might be here presumed. These were the departments 
of nature with respect to which we were uncertain (the 
phenomena being hard to analyse), and the tendency 
was to place the uncertainty in the things. This has 
not entered formally into the views of any correct 
thinker for a long time back, e. g. y so as to modify a 
formal argument ; but an influence from it might, in 
a loose way, and inadvertently, adhere to the mind 
and occasionally manifest itself. Hence also a ten- 
dency to suppose those to be departments of nature 
in which especially place or room might be as- 
sumed to exist for a kind of interference not else- 
where manifest, and that in them the agency of va- 
rious supernatural beings, good and evil, might be 
specially and frequently exerted. The progress of 
science has narrowed the domain regarding which it 
was possible to frame such fancies ; and it has taught 
many how unreasonable it is to entertain suchfanciesre- 
garding any department of nature — winds, earthquakes., 
or any other whatever. This influence, then, has been 
exerted by the progress of science, and it has been ex- 
erted legitimately ; and now, does any one suppose 
that this influence is adverse to a belief in Scripture 
miracles? He who does so betrays only the most 
complete confusion of mind upon the subject of 
miracles, and the relations in which miracles must 
stand with the ordinary process of the world. 

Tor now, to come to the point as regards this branch 



42 ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIEACLES. 

of the subject, this constancy of nature, of which so 
much has been said, — which has been illustrated so 
copiously by all the investigations that have re- 
duced phenomena to laws, and assigned manner 
and measure to the forces of the world — this constancy 
of nature, how does it really stand related to miracles ? 
It is the supposition and assumption on which miracles 
are based, and upon which the evidence for miracles 
rests. It is so far from having anything in it against 
miracles, that it is the foundation of the argument for 
miracles arid from miracles. 

It needs no elaborate or metaphysical reasoning 
to make this out. The constancy of nature, as 
applicable to this argument, includes these posi- 
tions. 1. That no event takes place without a cause, 
or set of conditions on which its occurrence depends. 
Secondly, that the objects around us in the world, 
w T ith their properties, are to be regarded as constant 
causes, embodying forces that are constant in the 
manner and measure of their working, or conform ac- 
curately to law. The conditions being all present in 
the same way, and nothing present to modify their 
action, the event always will take place. These are 
precisely the fundamentals of the argument concern- 
ing miracles. Here is an event, it must have a cause. 
There must have been a power precedent, a source of 
power present to produce it. Secondly, it cannot be 
ascribed to any ordinary cause, any of those which 
exemplify their action in the experience of the world's 
processes. For these are constant in their working, 
they make no leaps, they do not vary from the track. 
The forces of nature have a range and a physiognomy 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIKACLES. 



43 



of their own ; and so the miracle stands out, still claim- 
ing to have its cause found. 

No doubt it may be said, how can you tell but 
that the extraordinary event which you call a miracle 
may be the effect of some purely natural cause, 
though it be a cause not yet discovered? If this 
is objected, it is enough to reply, first, that though 
it may sound well as generally stated, there are 
some events of which no one will venture to 
allege, that they could be produced by natural 
causes ; and secondly, (as has been very well urged 
lately,) that the very progress of science since those 
days, with the discovery and analysis of natural forces 
which it implies, puts it more than ever out of the 
question that natural causes, undiscovered, still should 
have produced, eighteen hundred years ago, the re- 
markable events of which we speak. 

Well, but remember that we are not speaking about 
an " event " merely. The events do not stand alone. 
They are connected with a man. The man performed 
them, and that simply by a word, indicating that the 
divine power was now to go forth to accomplish them. 
A word indicates that the finger of God is to be laid 
on the things of nature, and that you are to see events 
of an unprecedented pattern, springing amid its ordi- 
nary phenomena. Hence it has been said that it is 
not merely miracle, but prophecy terminating in 
miracle, that is here presented to us. Again the event 
is not solitary another w T ay, for it is one of a number 
and a variety of such events, which are said to cluster 
round this man's history. Yet, again, this man and 
his w 7 orks, arise in the line of a great providential 
movement which has been going on for ages, in the 
history of a people whose religious character and ex- 



44 ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIEACLES. 

perience are most singular. Finally, the appearance 
of this man, by whom, andatwhose word these wonders 
were wrought, has proved, beyond all question, to be 
the turning point of the history of the w 7 orld. These 
are the 'miracles of which we speak, the miracles 
alleged by us. And they are related to the constancy 
of nature, simply in the manner which I described a 
little ago. 

I know very well that those who wish to make a 
difficulty on this ground, try to stretch the principle 
of the constancy of nature, so as to make it cover a 
position which would sustain a more effectual argu- 
ment. They say, " This is the constancy of nature as 
we find it verified, viz. that no event occurs, that cannot 
be referred to a natural and constant cause, to a law 
that is capable of being assigned and verified. We 
know that many marvels have occurred which seemed 
inexplicable for a time ; of these, many have been 
explained ; when explained, it has always been by 
assigning them to causes working according to con- 
stant and assignable laws. And we believe this to be 
the constancy of nature, viz., that no event ever oc- 
curs that may not be referred to natural and constant 
causes." But, to assume this ground, is to advance a 
whole bunch of fallacies. First, it assumed what is 
denied as to universal experience. Secondly, if it be 
taken of more recent experience, it comes to this, that 
for a long time, and during the whole formation of the 
rigorous experimental science, we have seen nothing 
but the agency of constant causes, and these conform- 
ing, of course, to their constant laws. This is as much 
as to say, that we have not seen, for a long time, God 
working any miracles. What does that prove ? Not 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 45 

even that He is not working them, though that may- 
be probable enough on other grounds ; but simply, 
that God is not wont to exhibit miracles, either to 
entertain or to perplex those who investigate the pro- 
cesses of nature. Does any body really suppose that 
the advocates of miracles are bound to assert that He 
will or that He ought ? But I do not choose to dwell 
on these things. For, as it seems to me, the proper 
answer to the assumption, as thus stated, is simply 
this, that it contradicts the fundamental principles of 
the Inductive Philosophy. There is not a position 
more sacredly established in the modern philosophy 
than this, that no a priori principle, such as that as- 
sumed, can absolutely prejudge or exclude the proper 
evidence of a fact or phenomenon having taken place. 
It may be, and is true, that certain kinds of alleged 
facts may be highly improbable on various grounds. 
They maybe so improbable as to justify a man in requir- 
ing very respectable evidence before attending to the 
allegation, and in sifting the evidence very well before 
he believes it. It would be interesting (if it were 
possible here, which it is not) to consider the just 
operation of this kind of improbability, and how far it 
does or does not attach to the miracles of Scripture. 
All I can say now is, that when you come to proba- 
bilities, you must take in all the kinds and all the 
sources of probability. But all this, whatever be in 
it, does not come in the way of the assertion I have 
made, viz., that no presumptions or assumptions such 
as that supposed, can absolutely exclude the proof of 
a fact. The fact, the phenomenon, duly witnessed, 
must be admitted, and then you immediately cast 
about for the cause or source of it. " Yes," some one 



46 ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIEACLES. 

may reply, "we look for a cause reducible to a law, and 
we will admit the fact on the hypothesis that it may 
be so reducible." I reply, You tly in the face of the 
fundamental principles of inductive philosophy in 
prescribing any such conditions. The fact must come 
to its rights ; it must do so, even if it be a fact that 
shall imply a wholly new kind of causes. Your busi- 
ness is to take facts and causes as they come ; to trace 
and verify them, not to dictate to them. 

No, — there is no argument of this kind that will 
stand, unless you can establish a positive impossibility, 
by positively excluding every ground for, or every 
source of miracles. And that can only be by Atheism, 
not assumed, or asserted, but proved. 

For, only consider, that we modify the course of 
nature. We are doing it continually. God has been 
pleased to appoint or allow, that the course of nature 
may be controlled by the interposition of will, acting 
freely, though within limits, the whereabouts of which 
is easily ascertained. And. being conscious of this 
every day of our lives, is it anything but philosophy 
bewitched, fascinated by ghosts of its own raising, that 
can persuade men who admit a personal God, to allow 
themselves to be entangled in such a feeble web of 
sophistry as this is ? What should hinder God from 
interposing in like manner ; only with a power and 
mastery that mark the interposition as His ? 

But will He? Here we come on a new way of 
putting the objection, and one that falls in very much 
with the current tone on these matters. Men say, 
" We believe in God ; but as we contemplate His 
works in their magnificent march from age to age, the 
conviction grows and deepens that this is God's man- 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 47 

ner, to work by laws ; and that He w 7 ill have us to 
y mark it as His manner, His way of working; and the 
e march of science over all departments deepens this 
a conviction on our minds ; and it will deepen it on the 
3 minds of men at large, whatever you may choose to 
t say to the contrary. God, as a matter of fact, accus- 
toms us to this style and w T ay of working — viz., 
"by laws, — and the impression grows strong, that to 
suppose He ever works otherwise is a mistake, and 
rests on some mistake or other." This may be regarded 
as one of the best shapes which the argument can 
assume ; and in this shape it falls in very much w T ith 
that strain of remark which I indicated near the be- 
ginning of the lecture, as at present popular in certain 
quarters. " What we see makes us think it unlikely, 
that God will, or would work miracles.'' Now, it 
might be enough to say, that an objection like this 
would be all very well, if we had nothing to do but to 
discuss likelihoods ; it would not be strong, but it 
might have a certain weight ; but that it is merely 
presumptuous, when we are dealing with evidence that 
miracles have been wrought. Let it be proved if it 
can be proved, that God cannot work miracles ; or, 
let it be proved if it can be proved, that God ought 
not to work miracles. But if neither of these things 
can be proved, then you never can plead your opinion 
of what God will do, to shut out evidence of what He 
has done. This might be enough, if a complete argu- 
ment were the only thing in view. But we are here 
dealing with an impression, vague it may be, and 
unreasonably applied ; but impressions are not the 
less influential in many cases, because they are vague, 
nor although they are unreasonable. And, therefore, 



48 ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 

I have thought it fit to speak of the ends of mir- 
acles, that we may both perceive the groundless 
character of that impression, and may feel on the con- 
trary how fitly miracles fall in with the design of the 
dispensations of God. 

I say, then, that what God will do, or the style of 
operation which He will adopt, depends on the ends 
He has in view, and which, by his working, He de- 
signs to bring to pass. Now the experience of the 
world, as observed and analysed by scientific investi- 
gators, shews us God's way of working for the unfold- J 
ing of the physical world, from age to age, and for 
enabling man to develope his ordinary history in the 
scene so constituted. God's way of working here, and J 
for these ends, appears to be by upholding constant I 
forces, which operate according to fixed laws. And I 
this result of observation may be taken as yielding a J 
presumption that in general that will be his manner J 
in this sphere and for these ends. Yet it can never be 
more than a presumption ; and even as a presumption 
cannot be stretched very far. We do not know where 
or when reasons may exist which shall make it fit 
for God to interpose some altered mode of working, 
some form of energy that cannot be reduced to 
the formula I have referred to. Still we see how 
steadfastly, for ages, the order of the universe abides, 
all things being set in number, and measure, and 
weight. We see how fitted it this to promote the edu- 
cation of the race, and to give us the opportunity of 
penetrating one depth after another of creative wis- 
dom, power, and glory. We see how impressively 
such a mode of working, by its very steadfastness, is 
fitted to train us in the knowledge of some Divine 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 



49 



attributes. We see how the conceptions which this 
order supplies, meeting us and shining out on us from 
every domain of science, furnish the mind of man for 
steady and growing mastery over nature. And so we 
may well gather that this is to be the ordinary cha- 
racter of our experience, as it regards God's ways of 
working in this sphere and for these ends. 

But there are other ends which God may and does 
design, for the attainment of which miracles seem 
to be the appropriate and most admirable means : 
not miracles scattered without an apparent reason 
through the workings of nature, but occurring as 
marked exceptions to the general order, and in marked 
connection with the object for which they are designed. 
There may be many reasons in consideration of which 
God might work miracles which we do not know ; his 
reasons are his own. But there are some which w r e 
do know, and which we ought to consider. And 
these reasons which we do know, these ends which we 
may assign are most weighty ; and they are such that, 
if we are not to say they could not be attained without 
miracles — which is perhaps more than ought to be 
asserted by us — we may yet say that there is no other 
way by us conceivable in which they could have been 
attained. 

For miracles accompany revelation. They present 
themselves as fit works of God when He reveals. This, 
I may say, furnishes us with the reason why we have 
seen no miracles for so many ages (the fact on which 
the doubt is based). If God has closed his revelation, 
it is no wonder that He has ceased for the present to add 
those signs. Objectors love to reason as though 
miracles, if possible at all, might be expected to turn 

D 



50 ON THE PLACE AND END OF MIEACLES. 

up occasionally in the midst of our experiments as u 
pure anomalies, that come from nothing and go to ti 
nothing. "We assert, and are bound to assert, no such 1 ( 
thing. We believe in no miracles but such as are the g 
birth of God's steadfast purposes, and are ordered to j 
ends. And believing the ends of miracles to be con- I 
nected with the process of revelation, the fact that i 
they do not occur during this period in which re- | 
velation has bid us wait for our Lord's return, is i 
precisely what we should be prepared to count upon. ( 

I repeat, then, miracles present themselves as fit i 
works of God Eevealing. They come to us, then, as 
part of this general allegation, that God has been 
pleased to deal with the minds and wills of men by 
something additional to the works of nature, viz., by 
revelation. So that it is with reference to the end 
thus assigned, and with reference to that only, that 
the question ought to be raised. Is the natural order 
of things, with its constant course, the only revelation 
of himself which God has made to man? or is there a 
farther dealing with the minds and wills of men by 
revelation ? For if so, then here, where God passes 
forth beyond nature to speak, it may be very fit that 
he should pass beyond nature to do. 

Now through natural things God does deal with 
our minds. They supply to our minds a noble field 
of exercise ; they disclose to us depths and reaches of 
beauty and order that are inexhaustible, for still 
the boundaries retreat as we pass onward over the 
field. Nor is it only with the creatures that our 
minds become conversant in this discourse. That 
which may be known of God also, is here. His being 
and perfections are in these things displayed to 



ON THE PLACE AND END OF MIRACLES. 51 

us. And there is that within us which teaches us 
to refer those works to a personal and righteous 
God, and suggests to us the concreated law under 
which He has placed us, and which w T e cannot 
doubt to be the expression to us of His eternal will. 
He does reach our minds through the things that are 
made ; and the minds w T hich he reaches are so consti- 
tuted, that being put in play they do or may gather 
true thoughts of God, they may discern something 
of His nature and something of His will. But 
then this is not enough, for man. We have the best 
reason for believing it was not enough, even in the un- 
fallen state ; certainly it is not enough now that man 
is fallen. 

God speaks to us by His works ; yet there remains 
a distance ; yes, and there is a silence too. The voice 
is gone through all the earth, the words to the ends 
of the world ; yet there is no speech, there is no lan- 
guage, their voice is not heard. For this great nature 
stands and utters herself from age to age in her play 
of laws, unbending, equal to herself ; so that the more 
she is searched, though the chorus deepens, widens, 
swells immeasurably, yet the sum of meaning is 
found only the more certainly to be the same, one 
unvarying sameness from age to age — one tranquil 
and majestic testimony to every man and every race 
— uttered still as fully and persistently if there is no 
man to hear, no mind to be filled by it. Here indeed 
God is revealed, yet so that he remains veiled. There 
is not enough here for man. Bearing God's own 
image he needs more. He was made for fellowship, for 
intercourse, for friendship, not only with his fellows, 
but with his Maker. And that implies the disclo- 



52 



ON THE PLACE AND END OF MIRACLES. 



sure of personal meanings, mind apprehended bending 
to my mind, and heart moving to meet my heart. 
Moreover, that element in man, in virtue of which 
he can choose and take his course as a moral 
being finds no sympathy, in the steadfast and equal 
sequences of nature. Man feels, indeed, that God 
must be one who has a moral character. But he finds 
no adequate utterance addressed to this capital ca- 
pacity. 

Even conscience, the monitor within, which, as life 
unfolds, suggests to us what the character of the great 
Creator is, does not speak the adequate utterance of 
man's Maker to such a being as man; rather it moves 
man to a listening earnestness, to say, Speak, be not 
silent unto me. If there be no answer but that which 
nature gives, then God remains veiled and distant. 
For, let it be remembered, it is the nature of man, and 
the very meaning of his place in this scene of things,, 
that he should be dealt with from without. The con- 
science and capacities within fit him to hearken to 
voices from without. And if the constitution and 
course of nature be the only divine utterance, so ad- 
dressed, to him, then as to the highest wants and 
capabilities of man, God remains veiled. Wise, in- 
deed, He is, and benevolent, in general arrangements, 
but remote and immoveable — disclosing only purposes 
and meanings that are equal to themselves from age 
to age. He never, nowhere, comes down to walk, 
step for step, beside my path, and to make me feel that 
as my life of changes passes on, He has a purpose and 
a meaning for every change, and an individual pur- 
pose and meaning for the result to which every change 
shall bring me. 



I 



ON THE PLACE AND END OF MIRACLES. 



53 



That God, therefore, should reveal himself, in some 
way that is additional to the revelation in nature, 
should deal with our minds and wills in a way more 
personal and special, is surely an admissible idea. 
It is so in any view ; but it is more evidently so when 
we view man fallen. If God has any purpose of mercy 
towards man fallen, it must be revealed to him and 
made good to him in a way proportioned to his actual 
state. But man's actual state is that of having fallen 
out of harmony with himself, and witn God's works 
around him. He is plainly prone to miss and lose 
even those teachings which nature might afford to a 
purer mind. And he plainly needs information and 
direction which a purer mind would not need to seek 
from nature, or from any other quarter. 

The sum is, that on all accounts we may judge it 
fit, that to His creature man God shall have meanings 
to declare, meanings which nature does not disclose, 
of which her whole course seems calmly ignorant, 
meanings which she was not fitted to embody or attain. 

Now the method which God will take, in this 
special dealing with the minds of men, may be easily 
assigned. For we see how He has done it ; and we 
may at all events maintain to our opponents that so 
He might do it. There is nothing unworthy or un- 
likely about it. God can convey his meaning by a 
direct and most inward impression on His creature's 
mind, accompanying it with an assuring evidence as 
to the source from which, and the authority with 
which it comes. He might do that in the case of 
every man. But as I have already said, so I now re- 
peat, it is the nature of man, and the explanation of 
his whole place and constitution — that he was meant 



ON THE PLACE AND END OF MIEACLES. 



to be dealt with from without. He is dealt with 
through persons and through things without him, in 
all of which he finds the materials of his history, and 
the objects upon which his capacities are exercised : 
God, therefore, has chosen to deal with man, by mak- 
ing his inward impression on his servants' mind to be 
a message and a meaning concerning things and events 
transacted in the world. To these things and events the 
meaning, the Divine meaning is attached, or, in these it 
is embodied and realised. And this being declared by 
God's servant, God is seen and found entering into a 
special course of dealings with men, setting them forth 
into a history of transactions with God, at every turn 
of which they may be conscious of his nearness, of His 
special mind toward them, of that regard and bent of 
His thoughts, His judgments, and His mercies, which 
mere nature never could disclose. So he did before 
man fell. So He has done ever since. And thus man's 
nearest and most momentous relations to his God, 
in those matters in which man is above nature — in 
which man is not measured by mere mechanical forces 
— those relations are ascertained, unfolded, exercised, 
so as to produce the effects that are embraced in God's 
design. This is the kind of professed revelation to 
which the alleged miracles are attached. No one 
can show that such a revelation is unsuitable to man 
or unworthy of God. JSTow, I say that such a revela- 
tion, unfolding meanings of God which nature cannot 
disclose, of which, from age to age, she takes no note, 
and makes no sign, might most fitly be accompanied 
by works of God, that are no part of the order of 
nature, are no birth of the forces that are governed by 
her laws. Are not such works a fit token, that 



ON THE PLACE AND END OF MIRACLES. 



55 



those divine meanings, which man is now to appre- 
hend, and deal with, and keep in view as he looks 
out on the scenery of his life, are sure objective re- 
alities ? Do they not fitly assure him that though 
nature does not echo them to his inner man, as she 
does some other truths, yet he need not doubt nor 
fear, as though this persistent silence of nature were 
a silence of God? Do they not fitly assure him, that 
this added meaning with which he is called to deal, 
is no fancy of some erring brother, but is indeed the 
unfolded mind of God ? 

So then, in general, the miracles come to serve for 
attestation of the authority of the messenger; they are 
the work of divine power, here and now accompany- 
ing the man and going forth at his word He that is 
able to announce a present work of God, of the nature 
of immediate interposition, apart from the ordinary 
forces of nature, may well be thought commissioned 
to declare God's mind on those other matters, in re- 
spect to which he announces a message from on high. 
This, in general, is the leading function of miracles. 
But there are several additional considerations which 
are fitted to show you how fitly miracles occupy this 
place, and in how many ways they are adapted to pro- 
duce on the human mind the precise effects intended. 

For, first,'they are striking in their own nature ; they 
attract and secure attention, by their very unlikeness 
to the ordinary course of things. They call into the 
liveliest exercise that sense of awe to which immense 
and strange power wielded by the will of one unseen, 
disturbing the ordinary course of affairs, always gives 
birth in human minds. This effect, indeed, is pro- 
duced primarily in the witnesses and the contempo- 



56 ON THE PLACE AND END OF MIRACLES. 

raries ; but it is not confined to them. For every one 
who receives the message down to the latest genera- 
tions, may receive it as a message so from God, that 
when it came God laid claim to human attention and 
human submission by these emphatic and exceptional 
signs. To us, who are hardened and confused by sin, 
this admonitory emphasis of communication serves a 
most important purpose. For who does not feel that, 
as a race, we are in a condition of bondage to the 
creature, "serving the creature more than the creator?" 
This is our sin, that we have regard to the creatures, 
the order of things around us, as a seat of power, and 
a source of good, independent of God, and considered 
apart from Him. On the other hand, that Divine 
being, whom we do not altogether deny, we are skilful 
to place far away ; and we think of His will, so far as 
it is His, as no such august matter, just because all 
things continue as they were. On these accounts the 
appeal to our attention is made in a way precisely 
adapted to the evils of our state, when, along with the 
message (which, even if we believed it, we might be 
disposed to treat so idly) we have presented the idea 
of God's power in movement — in movement along a 
line of sudden energy that is strange to nature. This 
presents to us a person who sets forth his will in deeds. 
It suggests to us how much we need to have our rela- 
tions to that Power, and the results it brings about, 
and to the principles which it is pledged to enforce, 
adjusted, and set right. 

But, again, in another respect, the miracle is pre- 
cisely adapted to be the proper and convincing pledge 
of the truth of revelation. For observe what it is 



ON THE PLACE AND END OF MIRACLES. 57 

j that revelation is concerned to set forth. It sets forth 
: or reveals God ; yet not merely nor mainly God in 
the internal glory of His immanent perfections ; but 
rather God contemplated in that ivhich He is doing 
and will do. The communion or fellowship of God 
with man always proceeds by a manifestation of that 
which God will do. Special dealings and ways of 
procedure on God's part, on which nature is silent, are 
announced; things which God pledges himself to effect 
are declared. And man is to order and conform his 
ways answ T erably to those pledged proceedings of God. 
For man, as a historical being, is not called to stand 
with God, but to walk with Him. 

What the Eevelation therefore declares to man is 
this, how the powder of God will go forth in action, 
in justice, faithfulness and love ; and this egress of 
God's power man is thenceforth to expect, and in the 
expectation of it dealing with God as pledged to it, 
he is to go. This I repeat is the general character of 
Divine Eevelations. Now on account of this general 
character which attaches to them, the fit evidences 
are miracles and prophecy. Of prophecy which is 
itself a miracle, I will not speak now. But the 
miracle is an exhibition here and now of Divine 
action going forth in a manner and along a line 
strange to the action of constant causes and ordin- 
ary laws, singling out an effect which is not con- 
tained in the order of nature, and bringing it to pass. 
So it stands for a token that the agency of God shall 
not fail to be there and to do its work, when the 
times of the promise come round ; it stands for a 
token that the likelihood based on the appearances of 
things, on that certain order which seems to look so 



58 ON THE PLACE AND END OF MIKACLES. 

impassive on all our hopes and fears, is not to mea- 
sure or bound our faith. It justifies us in resolving 
that our faith shall measure its confidence only by 
the word, from which shall not be parted the power, 
of the infinite One. 

Still more impressively, however, do such considera- 
tions present and press themselves when we come 
nearer to the practical exigences of man, and con- 
sider what God undertakes and calls us to expect in 
a revelation of mercy. The revelation comes to 
sinners, and it sets forth a scheme of restitution. It 
finds us not only darkened and perplexed, which we 
have stated already, but undone. 

It finds us fallen, and so fallen, that neither nature 
nor conscience, in virtue of any power in either or 
both of them, shall enable us to emerge again on 
the platform of a state of solid well-being. The 
object therefore of the divine word and deed is not 
merely to unfold the possibilities and impossibilities 
of our actual state, but to make a new beginning of 
our highest life, from which beginning there shall go 
forward a career of deliverance and glory. This 
indeed may be denied ; men may assert that the fall 
was not so deep, and that the remedial dispensation 
does not import anything so extraordinary. But it 
is enough for my argument, that the case may be in 
this respect as I have stated it. This may be the 
actual fact and the Scripture doctrine : — the fall may 
be so deep, the remedy so wonderful and decisive. 
When we are maintaining the fitness of the miracle 
to be appended to the doctrine, we must be allowed 
to bring forward our own persuasion of what the 
doctrine is, and to allege the congruities discernible 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIEACLES. 59 

from our own point of view. At all events, whether 
granted or not, it must be asserted and maintained 
against all who deny it or explain it away, that the 
case is even so, that the fall is so ruinous, that the 
redemption must be so decisive. But if the case be 
so, . or be anything like this, then manifestly the 
question which is raised, and may be addressed to 
every teacher inspired or not, about every doctrine 
revealed or imagined, is not a question of truth 
merely, but a question of potver. Let true things be 
said bearing on the case, and on the relations both of 
God and man to it — true things, never so true and 
never so clearly truths, which God only could reveal, 
that is not enough ; the question is whether they are 
truths that set forth an assurance of power, actually 
coming forth to do the work required ; and whether 
they are accompanied with tokens and pledges that 
may certify and sustain the faith of so great a 
thing as the actual egress and exercise of this power. 
Is this truth wedded to a power and declarative of a 
power fit to deal with such a case as ours ? Is it allied 
to power, in whose going forth a Divine hand shall 
be laid on the ruin of the fall, a new life breathed, 
a new beginning made ; power that shall clear away 
the difficulties that obstruct our return, and open 
a pathway for us, and bring us thereby back to God? 
Are we left to the order of nature, and to the resources 
that are contained in and measured by her laws ? are 
we left to those forces, doomed to labour in contriv- 
ances that still break down, seeking to make nature 
serve a purpose for us, for which her powers were 
never destined? or ceasing from the toil, are we left 
to stand in the world, amid its many ordered har 



60 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIEACLES. 



monies, and feel how sadly they look on the creature 
that has fallen and gone astray ? Is that our case ? 
Or is there power, and does there come to us the as- 
surance of a power, which has entered into history, 
and can enter into our hearts, a power above any or 
all the powers that are contained in the order of 
nature, above them all ; power which however gently 
it entered into history, however secretly it may work 
wdthin the heart, is a power of that order which 
wrought in the beginning, and made the beginnings, 
a power that can lay — has laid — a new foundation, 
and can wake the pulses of a new heart ? That is the 
question of Redemption, a question not of truth only, 
but of power. . God means us to feel it to be the ques- 
tion. When we say so, we neither deny nor disgrace 
the natural order, which is good, and worthy to abide 
steadfast for its ends. Nor do we forget that that 
redeeming power has also its order, doubtless a glori- 
ous order, which we partly apprehend. Nor do we 
forget that usually that redeeming virtue is so co- 
ordinated to the natural order, or takes up that into 
its working, as to make no jar. But yet, in the end, 
that question still returns. Is there such a power 
pledged and working — power measureless? Are we 
assured that it comes, able to exceed and bear rule 
over all the forces of the natural order? Are we assured 
that there is no fate in that order that can stay its 
blessed course ? Is there a power that can bid any 
waves be still, make any diseases whole, awaken out 
of the most real death ? We need a revelation that 
shall deal with us so as to make this manifest and 
plain to us, a revelation that shall mark it as a most 
experimental matter of fact. Tor this is the con- 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 6 J 

dition, and the only ground of true faith in redemption; 
not otherwise shall there be born and reared, a faith 
that, in the presence of the evils of our state, shall expect 
and embrace redemption. There are times, decisive 
times in the lives of men, when this order of nature 
that girds us about, with its sure recurrences, its un- 
halting processes, its onward march, in which it seems 
to say, "The sum of power is mine, and I am the 
highest law/' presses upon men very sore. There are 
times when, doubting if there be anything beyond this 
that they can practically deal with ; men begin to 
realise what the order of nature means for a trans- 
gressor, for this is the order of nature, that the past 
determines and shapes the future. And the question 
rises, — He that came, asking for our faith, did He 
come like so many others, bringing words only, very 
good words, but oh how feeble, or did He come w r ith 
word and deed, words wedded to pow 7 er, as one able 
to reverse the past, and make all new ? Surely 
miracles were one direct, fit, most reasonable way to 
make this clear. Marvellously it sustains and leads 
on the mind, when we are passing in to deal with 
Christ about the inward mysteries of the heart of man, 
and the life of God, that we see those mighty works of 
His ; that we see how the magnificent and ancient 
order, which claims silently to sum in itself all the 
possible, retreated before His word to make way for 
new possibilities, for divine effects ; so that what was 
most wayward, and what w r as most stable in 
nature, put a new demeanour on when He came near 
— and waves and storms were quieted — and death 
awoke to life. 

This might lead us, if time served, to notice how 



62 ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 

the miracles in the nature or character of them were 
adapted to express the manner in which the divine 
power that is above nature would exert itself to carry- 
forward the divine counsel. It might be interesting 
to remark how the miracles varied with the stages of 
the dispensation, — in the time of Moses, expressing to 
that nation of slaves, called out to the privileges of 
God's first-born, how God set them free, fought along 
with them and for them, provided for them, carried 
them to their inheritance ; in the days of Elijah and 
Elisha, when the question was raised whether Jehovah 
were indeed the supreme and the Lord of the world, 
or whether another ought not to be preferred before 
Him, miracles that taught how the elements became 
servants of Jehovah's servants, to sustain them, to 
overthrow the rebellious, to reinstate the law of Moses, 
the servant of God ; in our Lords day, setting forth 
the character of Him who was, and is, God's abiding 
ordinance for good, God's fountain of living water set 
forth for us to drink it, the eternal life manifest in the 
flesh, and given to the need and the sorrow of men. 

But I cannot dwell on this, neither can I now go 
on to indicate other views that illustrate the reasons 
and ends of miracles, how fit it was that they shouhf 
have a place, and a large place in the divine economy 
of revelation. What has been said may go some way 
to illustrate how congruous they are to the work of 
God as revealing ; so that if you once admit that God 
might conceivably design to reveal to His creatures 
truths such as Scripture embodies, you cannot but 
admit that miracles form the most appropriate, ex- 
pedient, and, as far as we can judge, necessary accom- 
paniment, both with a view to declare the mission of 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES- 63 

the messengers, and also to elevate the impressions of 
men, and direct their perception of what they deal 
with, and whom they deal with, and how they are to 
bear themselves in their dealings when they hearken 
to the word of God. 

In conclusion, I shall express my persuasion that 
a due impression and belief of miracles (not alone our 
Lord's, but the others in the Scriptures in their connec- 
tion with his) belong to those exercises of faith which 
at the present day exercise a most important influence 
on our general persuasion of the truth of Christianity, 
and more particularly on our religious training and 
our spiritual wellbeing. I do not wish to be under- 
stood as offering to pass judgment on individuals, 
who, under various influences, may have been led to 
take some erroneous ground on this matter, but I am 
thoroughly persuaded that, speaking generally, the 
real ground and bottom of difficulties about miracles 
is to be found here, viz., that men are not really per- 
suaded of the fundamental truth that God is. And 
I believe, on the other hand, that a due impres- 
sion of the mighty acts of Christ and of his servants 
under the old dispensation and the new, is very im- 
portant for vivifying and brightening that belief, and 
counteracting some of the temptations of the present 
time. In former days, when the course of revelation 
was not yet completed, when, therefore, miracles still 
recurred from time to time, there was a trial of faith 
and an exercise for it. For so it was in those days 
that men were not so much disposed to deny the pos- 
sibility of something more or less miraculous ; but 
they were ready many of them to think that such works 
might come from an evil source. And so the connec- 



64 ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OP MIRACLES. 

tion of the miracle with the whole course of God's 
dispensations, and with the character and teaching of 
him who was commissioned to perform it, came in to 
steady the mind and to fix the confidence of those who 
believed in God. Now the current runs the other 
way. Men, familiarised with the great discoveries 
which have expounded so much of the ways of na- 
ture's working, and shewn us steadfast principles 
always exemplified as regulating the forces of the 
world, are tempted to make nature a prison both for 
God and man. They are tempted to believe in a God, 
measured in his working by that which nature shews, 
and to cut down religion to the proportions of such a 
God. Very much now the question of the faith is in- 
volved in our admiring and adoring God, doubtless as 
He exhibits himself in his works in the order of na- 
ture, and yet so that we refuse to stay there, and pass 
forward to adore Him as the " God that is above/' 
Now miracles, as connected with the especial declara- 
tion of himself by God to man's spirit and man's need, 
with the drawing near of God to institute a fellowship 
of salvation, come into connection with this faith. A 
due impression about them is at once an instance of 
that faith, and it exerts an influence to define and fix 
it When men who do not profess to deny miracles 
undervalue them, either as evidence of our religion, 
or as a constitutive element of it, they exhibit a very 
shallow spiritualism, and indicate at least a defective 
exercise of mind about the being and ways of God. 
And the exercise of our mind in this department 
should gather itself to an especial energy as it rises to 
contemplate the central miracle and the source of 
miracles in the blessed and adorable person of the 



ON THE PLACE AND ENDS OF MIRACLES. 65 

Lord Jesus. In the midst of all the voices, loud and 
low, that nature utters with her multitudinous tongues 
(which all do speak something of God), let us catch the 
accents of another voice, clearer, deeper, charged with 
quite another meaning — a voice coming from heaven, 
opened across that tide of lower sounds — a voice that 
says, " This is my beloved Son ; hear Him." 



E 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY 

IN RELATION TO 

SECULAR PROGRESS. 

BY 

WILLIAM G. BLAIKIE, D.D., F.RS.E. 



44 All things are yours ; whether things present or things to come."— 1 Cor. in. 21, 



Among the many charges that are brought in these 
days against spiritual Christianity, one is, that it 
hinders secular progress, that it weakens all attempts 
to promote the temporal welfare of mankind. By 
spiritual Christianity is meant that which rests on 
such doctrines as these ; — that the salvation of the soul 
through faith in Christ, and the regeneration of the 
Holy Spirit, is the one thing needful ; that it profits a 
man nothing if he gain the whole world and lose his 
own soul ; that this world is but a temporary and 
fleeting scene, the mere portal of the eternity which 
is beyond ; and that our great object here should be 
to get our spirits trained and ripened for the life to 
come. The spirit of these doctrines, it has been 
alleged, is in many ways adverse to social improve- 
ment and secular progress. They teach us (accord- 
ing to the secularist) to look with resignation and 
indifference on the evils that prevail in the w r orld, 
instead of trying to remedy them ; they tend to make 
us careless of wrong now, because w r e say all will be 
put right hereafter ; they lead us to stifle some of our 
truest instincts, such as desire of property, love of 
nature, love of home, love of innocent joys and reerea- 



70 SPIKITUAL CHRISTIANITY 

tions ; they make us aim at an impossible life, at living 
in the future and the unseen while we are intended to 
live mainly in the present and the visible; they engage 
us to a warfare in which we cannot conquer, spur us 
to a race in which we cannot win ; and thus, through 
the constant mortification of defeat, make us cross, 
and sour, and miserable, oftentimes less genial and 
less gladsome than many who are living without God, 
and without hope in the world. 

Thus Mr W. E. Greg, one of the class of serious 
sceptics so characteristic of the present day, has said, 
" It is only those who feel a deep interest in, and affec- 
tion for this world who will work resolutely for its 
amelioration ; those whose affections are transferred to 
heaven acquiesce easily in the miseries of earth, give 
them up as hopeless, as befitting, as ordained, and 
console themselves with the idea of the amends which 
are one day to be theirs. If we had looked upon this 
earth as our only scene, it is doubtful if we should so 
long have tolerated its more monstrous anomalies and 
more cureable evils. But it is easier to look to a 
future paradise than to strive to make one on earth ; 
and the depreciating and hollow language of preachers 
has played into the hands both of the insincerity and 
the indolence of mankind." To these general remarks 
this writer subjoins a note furnished him by a friend, 
to the effect, that when he counted up among his per- 
sonal friends all whom he thought to be most decidedly 
given to spiritual contemplation, and to make religion 
rule in their hearts, at least three out of four appeared 
to have been apathetic towards all improvement of 
this world's systems, and a majority had been virtual 
conservatives of evil, and hostile to political and 



IN RELATION TO SECULAR PEOGEESS. 



71 



social reform, as diverting men's energies from 
eternity* 

Much to the same effect is a remark by Mr Buskin, 
in the 5th vol. of his " Modern Painters " The right 
faith in man is not intended to give him repose, but 
to enable him to do his work. It is not intended that 
he should look away from the place he lives in now, 
and cheer himself with thoughts of the place he is to 
live in next, but that he should look stoutly into this 
world, in faith that if he does his work thoroughly 
here, some good to others or himself, with which, how- 
ever, he is not at present concerned, will come of it 
hereafter. And this kind of brave, but not very hope- 
ful or cheerful kind of faith, I perceive to be always 
rewarded by clear practical success and splendid intel- 
lectual power ; while the faith which dwells in the 
future fades away into rosy mist and emptiness of musi- 
cal air. That result, indeed, always follows naturally 
enough on its habit of assuming that things must be 
right, or must come right, when probably the fact is, 
that so far as w r e are concerned, they are entirely 
wrong and going wrong, and also on its false and weak 
way of looking on what these religious persons call 
■ the bright side of things/ that is to say, on one side 
of them only, when God has given them two sides, 
and intended us to see both." 

Besides standing in the way of the temporal good 
of society, spiritual Christianity is conceived by its 
opponents to be a great promoter of insincerity and 
hypocrisy on the part of those who affect it. They 
are regarded as ever professing to view this world and 



* The Creed of Christendom, p. 2 51. 



72 SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY 

all its interests in a light which is not real and true. ft 
One of the writers whom I have quoted (Mr Greg) sf 
draws a picture of a preacher urging his congregation o 
" to despise this world and all that belongs to it ; to o 
detach their hearts from this earthly life as inane, 1 
fleeting, and unworthy, and fix them on heaven, as e 
the only sphere deserving the love of the loving, or t 
the meditation of the wise then, an hour afterwards, | 
snugly seated with his hearer at a well-spread table, i 
enjoying all the comforts of life, fondling his children, i 
discussing public arrangements or private plans in life i 
with passionate interest ; and yet both preacher and 
hearer looking at each other without a smile or a 
blush for the hollow and unworthy profession they are 
regarded as just having been making in church. In 
general, too, wholesale charges of hypocrisy against 
persons professing great spirituality are based upon 
an alleged difference between the way in which they 
practically treat this world, and the principles they 
profess to hold regarding it. It is insinuated, or 
boldly affirmed, that your very spiritual men know 
very well in most cases how to look after their own 
interests, and that the great contempt of the w T orld 
which they affect is often not apparent when they are 
concluding a bargain or maintaining a right. But, then, 
there is a natural unwillingness on their part to be- 
lieve that what they do and what they feel is funda- 
mentally at variance with that superiority to the world 
which they profess to have attained ; and hence (it is 
affirmed) a temptation arises to a course of sophistry 
that goes to vitiate conscience, and to make the light 
which is in them darkness. They are unwilling to 
let themselves believe that they really have a love for 



IN EELATION TO SECULAE PEOGEESS. 



73 



the good things of this world ; they will not let them- 
selves fancy that they have any enjoyment in money 
or the other good things of life, or in a tale of fiction, 
or in an athletic exercise, or in a secular amusement. 
They are tempted to forced and unnatural methods of 
explaining their sensations in connection with such 
things ; an atmosphere of self-deception is created 
around them ; their consciences become morbid and 
unreliable ; and, in many cases, the way is prepared 
for terrible departures from duty, for those flagrant 
outbreaks of corruption which give a triumph to the 
ungodly, and fill the hearts of Christians with horror 
and shame. Of course, I am not endorsing these 
charges against spiritual Christianity. I merely report 
them as the assertions of secularists ; while, at the 
same time, it is impossible to deny that there are some 
professors of spiritual religion whose conduct does give 
a colouring of truth to the exaggerated picture. 

In the case of some honest, humble, holy men, who 
day by day are endeavouring to live according to their 
conception of the spiritual life, there is often an un- 
comfortable uncertainty whether or not they are right 
in the attention they bestow on the things of this 
world, and the pleasure they derive from them. There 
is a lingering notion that there is something essen- 
tially carnal and wrong in all those tastes and ten- 
dencies which are not directly of a religious nature. 
To crucify all these tastes and tendencies they have 
never made up their minds to attempt ; but not being 
very sure about them, it is in a somewhat furtive and 
underhand way they gratify them, as if they were afraid 
to attract the observation of persons more spiritually- 
minded, and were conscious of an inferiority which 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY 



they cannot defend. A life spent in this atmosphere t( 
of uncertainty can neither be a very comfortable nor j 
very influential one. The tread of such persons 
cannot be the firm and manly advance of those who 
walk in the day, but rather the timid and hesitating q 
motion of " him who walketh in darkness, and knoweth c 
not whither he goeth." j 

All these considerations make it exceedingly de- j 
sirable that we should endeavour to get our concep- 1 
tions cleared as to what the "Word of God really i 
teaches on the relation of Christians to this world, and ] 
the bearing of spiritual Christianity on social improve- 
ment and secular progress generally. The subject is 
one of great practical importance, and it demands not 
a little delicate discrimination and careful handling. 
Our course lies between a Scylla and a Charybdis — 
between a morbid spiritualism on the one hand, and a 
vulgar secularism on the other ; and I must frankly 
throw myself on the indulgence of my audience ; for 
besides the difficulties I have already mentioned, there 
is great difficulty, within the limits of a single lecture, 
in making one's meaning clear, and preventing mis- 
conceptions on the many points that must be raised. 
The subject is a two-sided one, and it is but one of 
its sides that I have directly to deal with. I hope it 
will not be inferred that I am indifferent to the other, 
or that, in shewing how godliness really has the pro- 
mise of the life that now is, I forget that its great in- 
heritance is in that which is to come. 

What, then, is the doctrine of the Bible as to the 
relation to this world in which Christians should 
stand, more especially — I. As to the sense in which 
the world is to be renounced and overcome ; and II. As 



IN EELATION TO SECULAR PEOGEESS. 



75 



to the sense in which it is to be possessed and en- 
joyed? 

1. My first remark in reply to the former of these 
questions is, that in reproving the love of the world, and 
calling on Christians to renounce it, the Bible does so on 
great moral grounds — not because the world is in itself 
a bad thing, or essentially unworthy of our regard, but 
because devotion to the world, as it usually exists, 
tends to the destruction of our higher nature, and 
hinders the application of the great Divine remedy 
for our sin. What the Bible aims its thrust at is 
idolatry of the world, and especially of its more ma- 
terial interests ; putting these in the place of God ; 
treating them as the chief good and the main chance 
for man ; using them as the prodigal son used his 
share of his father's goods, — not with his father, nor 
under his wholesome supervision, but away by him- 
self in a far-off country ; making them thus the occa- 
sion of an actual separation from the personal God, 
and from all those holy and blessed influences that 
come from Him. The uniform teaching of the Bible 
is, that when the world is thus treated, the nature of 
man is not only dwarfed and starved, but corrupted^ 
and finally ruined. Its baser tendencies are vio- 
lently stimulated ; a grovelling and selfish character 
is formed ; all reverence for what is high, and pure, 
and holy evaporates ; the blessed habit of correcting 
and elevating our ideas and impressions of things, by 
placing ourselves beside God, and looking on them 
from his lofty stand-point, has no existence ; that sense 
of the dignity and grandeur of our being which is de- 
rived from the habitual contemplation of Eternity is 



76 



SPIEITUAL CHEISTIANITY 



lost ; that awful impression of our responsibility, and 
of the meaning and bearing of our life here which 
comes from viewing them in their relations to an end- 
less existence, in which both we and all around us are to 
bear a part, never comes into play ; the soul becomes 
numb and torpid, it degenerates into a kind of higher 
animal instinct, into a faculty that guides merely to 
present enjoyment. And with all this, there grows 
up a sad aversion to a spiritual Saviour and salvation, 
an unwillingness to be disturbed in present pleasures 
and pursuits, a disbelief in the reality of any future 
state, a dread of God, a feeling that his presence 
must be hateful, an inability to conceive of a higher 
life, a horror at the thought of being born again. 
And as it is impossible for any one to degenerate 
God wards, without also falling off manwards, the 
human sympathies, under this process, contract and 
shrivel ; and selfishness, in many of its most odious 
forms, becomes the ruling power within. It would 
not be difficult to shew that this is what the Word of 
God regards as the bad and dangerous elements of 
the love of the world. It is in this sense mainly that 
we are called to renounce and to overcome it. As 
God's rival in its claim to our hearts, and in its offer 
of reward, we dare not listen to it ; and when the 
tempter spreads before us the glittering prize, as he 
did to J esus in the wilderness, we are to repel him in 
the stern words of our Master, "Get thee hence, 
Satan ; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord 
thy God, and him only shalt thou serve/' 

2. Hence, secondly, I remark that the great anti- 
thesis to the world in the Bible, the great object for 
whom the Bible claims the worlds place in our 



IN RELATION TO SECULAR PROGRESS. 



77 



hearts, is God. It does not simply substitute a better 
\ world for a bad one, as secularists allege ; it does not 
■ bid us expel this world from our hearts, and admit a 
i better ; it bids us give God his due place in them — 
that place which the world has usurped. Hence the 
grand object of the redemption accomplished by the 
death of Christ is given in these words — " Christ also 
hath once suffered for sin, the just for the unjust, that 
he might bring as unto God" — not merely that He 
might free us from deserved punishment, or even that 
He might restore us to our forfeited inheritance, but, 
including these, yet going far beyond them, " that he 
might bring us unto God." The great end of redemp- 
tion is to place man in a right relation to God, and 
thus to bring to bear on Him all those purifying, ele- 
vating, transforming influences that come directly 
from his Father. Thus it was that when the prodigal 
son came to himself, he saw as clear as mid-day that 
the one course for him to take was to rise and go unto 
his father. It was not more money he wanted then. 
It was not another and better inheritance some- 
where else that would have satisfied him ; this might 
have been his feeling at one time, but not " when he 
came to himself." And so, in the Bible, it is coming 
back to our Father, coming into a blessed relation to 
God, God in Christ, that is presented to us as the 
better part, the pearl of great price, the great end of 
redemption, the great substitute for the world as the 
true portion of our hearts. When we come into that 
blessed relation, not in theory only, but in practice, we 
come under the influence of all healing, purifying, ele- 
vating agencies. Whatever in us the world has cor- 
rupted, the influence of God's fellowship renews. We 



78 



SPIKITUAL CHRISTIANITY 



come under a glorious fatherly training, of which we 
know the issue is to be the complete restoration of the 
character, and the complete restitution of the privileges 
of God's children. Even as this process goes on, some 
of these privileges are enjoyed. Among other things, 
we are invited to have filial fellowship with God in 
the contemplation of his works in the world around 
us, and in the enjoyment of some of the good things 
of this life. In our present state, however, this privi- 
lege is guarded and limited, because we are so prone to 
forget that filial spirit in which these gifts should be 
received. We are so prone to forget that it is as God's 
children we should go about the study of his works 
and the enjoyment of his gifts. But then we are 
always getting glimpses of another state, where this 
proneness to forget our Father shall no longer exist, 
and these restrictions shall no longer be required. 
"We are stimulated to patience and cheerfulness under 
the ills of this life by the hope of that better portion. 
But it is not merely as a better inheritance that it is 
made to animate us. It is not merely that the place 
is to be better, but that we are to be better — in better 
company — under better influences — in our Fathers 
house — under our Father's care. It is as the portion 
which we are to enjoy with our Father, and with 
Jesus Christ, our elder brother, in whose image we are 
to be confirmed and established for ever. I appeal to 
any intelligent reader of the Bible whether, in all its 
pictures of heaven, this thought is not uppermost. " I 
saw no temple there, for the Lord God Almighty and 
the Lamb are the temple of it." " I have a desire to 
depart, and to be with Christ, w T hich is far better.'' 
" It doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we 



IN EELATION TO SECULAR PEOGEESS. 79 

know that when he shall appear, we shall he like 
him, for we shall see him as he is." 

Hence it is not a picture hut a caricature of the 
Scripture doctrine of the better life, when it is repre- 
sented as teaching us to sacrifice everything that is good 
and pleasant here, in order that we may enjoy a larger 
share of the same kind of things hereafter. We are 
not encouraged to renounce this world and seek after 
heaven simply because the one is a bad investment, 
and the other a good. We are not called to be patient 
and content under loss and suffering here, on the 
mere ground that, like money sunk in a deferred 
annuity, what we put past us at present will bring 
a^reat increase hereafter. We are not required to 
neglect the interests of time, because it will be more 
profitable to attend to the interests of eternity. In 
fact, neither the interests of the soul, nor the inter- 
ests' of eternity is a Scriptural phrase, and the mer- 
cantile aspect of both should banish them from use. T 
grant that the Bible does not exclude the considera- 
tion—that in the future life God's children shall have 
a far better portion than any that this world can 
bestow. I grant that it does present this as one 
ground of consolation for loss and suffering here. 
But I maintain that it is a subordinate consideration; 
it is by no means the leading view of the bearing of 
this life on that which is to come. The course which 
is set before Christians in this life, has ever for its 
chief recommendation, that in following it they are 
brought nearer to God, more under the direct influ- 
ence of His grace and truth ; that thus their own 
character is elevated, and their influence upon others 
for o-ood is increased ; that more of the filial spirit is 



80 



SPIKITUAL CHRISTIANITY 



gendered in them, and a greater capacity for enjoy- i 
ing the fellowship of the Father ; and that all this ' 1 
will be for their good in the world to come, inasmuch i 
as by the gracious provision of God, the place of his 
children in heaven will be according to their attain- i 
ments and services on earth. i 

But perhaps it will be said, that when we study 
the New Testament, we find a strain of remark and ex- 
hortation that seems to imply that it is a mark of a true 
Christian to live far above all the comforts and en- 
joyments of this world, and that instead of these, he 
must lay his account with a continual experience of 
griefs and pains ; a wilderness life, a life in an enemy's 
country, a career of harassment and vexation, never 
to be terminated till he crosses the Jordan, and gets 
to his Father's house. Did not Christ say to his 
disciples, " If any man will come after me, let him 
deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow 
me?" Did he not speak of a broad road that goeth 
to destruction, and a narrow way that leadeth unto 
life? Are we not told to go forth to him without the 
camp, bearing his reproach ? Is it not said that they 
that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecu- 
tion, and that through much tribulation we must enter 
into the kingdom of God ? Did not Christ dissuade 
his followers from laying up for themselves treasures 
on earth? Did not St. Paul call on Timothy to 
endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ ? 
Did he not tell him that the love of money was the 
root, or at least a root of all evil ? And do not all 
such texts and expressions teach us that the lot of 
the faithful Christian must always be a self- denying 
one ; that he ought not to desire nor attempt to make 



IN KELATION TO SECULAR PROGRESS. 81 



this life comfortable, but accepting it as necessarily 
hard and full of pain, expect neither rest nor happi- 
ness till he reach the promised land. 

To attempt an exhaustive examination of this class 
of texts would be utterly out of place on the present 
occasion ; for such a task would require a treatise 
rather than the corner of a lecture.* If we were to do 
so, we should probably find that the style of language 
adverted to finds its justification (1 .) in that unceasing 
effort to subject his own will to the will of God to 
which every child of God is called, but which does 
not necessarily imply physical discomfort, or barren- 
ness of worldly good. If there were nothing else to 
give pain to the Christian but that bitter and endless 
warfare with sin dwelling in him, which is so patheti- 
cally described in the seventh chapter of Eomans, 
there would be enough to account for a considerable 
portion of the expressions quoted. (2.) The effort re- 
quired to resist our strong and inveterate tendency to 
sin in our handling of worldly things, accounts for much 
of the strong language of Christ and His apostles. In 
handling money, for example, what constant care and 
self-denial are needed, to keep off the taint of greed, 
injustice, dishonesty, pride, dependence on the crea- 
ture, self-indulgence, not doing to others as we would 
that they should to us ! What extraordinary care 
and self-discipline are ever needed to discharge that 

* The reader may find the subject handled with great judgment 
and discrimination in a little treatise by my venerable friend, Mr 
John Shepperd of Frome, entitled " Thoughts at Seventy-nine," 
in the chapters on " New Testament Precepts." It will not be 
supposed that the admirable author of "Thoughts on Devotion" 
approaches the subject under the influence of a secular bias. 

F 



82 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY 



one department of stewardship ! Our hearts are 
ever ready to substitute an outward penance for an 
inward discipline, and to resort to outward renuncia- 
tions of worldly good, when the more essential thing 
is an inward separation from all taint of sinful lust. 
Nothing could be farther from my desire than to 
obliterate the distinction between the broad road and 
the narrow, or to make out that it is much easier to 
be a Christian than many suppose ; but it is very 
necessary to remind you that what, in all ages and 
in all circumstances, must chiefly make the Christian 
path a narrow one, is the necessity of a constant 
watch and struggle against sin in its more subtle as 
well as its grosser forms, — in the forms that are over- 
looked and tolerated in Christian society, as well as 
in those that are stigmatised and denounced. (3.) 
Still further, the language of Christ and His apostles 
is accounted for by the peculiar necessity of the times. 
It was necessary to prepare the church for the terrible 
era of persecution — the three centuries of fiery trial 
through which it had to pass. There are circum- 
stances in which it becomes the duty of Christians 
to abandon every possession and pleasure, however 
lawful in itself, out of loyalty to Christ. Though not 
the normal state of things, it is far from uncommon, 
and the spirit must be cultivated that will not shrink 
from the sacrifice. In times of trial, it is peculiarly 
necessary to call up this spirit, and train Christians to 
a more than ordinary indifference even to the lawful 
joys and possessions of the world. The early ages of 
Christianity were emphatically such times. Hence 
much of what is said by Christ and His apostles, on 
the obligation of Christians to face life-long affliction 



IN KELATION TO SECULAR PROGRESS. 83 



and tribulation, and the loss of all that was dear to 
them in this world. Hence, too, the extent to which 
they draw on what may be called the compensating 
power of Christianity — its great reserve — its power, 
through faith's vision of the future, to supply a solace 
and refreshment under the miseries of the present. 
It is true none of us can he s we that what befel the early 
Christians shall not befal us, and therefore it is always 
incumbent on us to cherish such a spirit, that if we 
were called to choose between Christ on the one hand, 
and poverty, disgrace, and persecution on the other, 
we should not hesitate one moment as to our choice. 
(And I daresay none of us would select a time of fiery 
persecution and struggle for very life, to push forward 
schemes for social improvement and secular progress.) 
But it is certain that the present times in this country 
are times of an opposite character. We have no open 
or public persecution. Domestic and social persecu- 
tion there may be, bitter enough at times ; but on the 
other hand, in how many cases are all the domestic 
and social influences in favour of Christianity — how 
often does one's choosing Christ delight the heart 
and gratify the warmest longings of one's friends and 
family ! 

It is out of the question, therefore, to regard all the 
strong language used by Christ and His apostles as 
applicable to present times. No doubt the faithful 
Christian will always have a cross to carry. There 
will always be mortal enemies in his own heart with 
whom he must grapple, and whom he must labour to 
subdue. There will always be fierce collisions between 
his will and Christ's will, and in all these he must 
sacrifice his own. Personal afflictions and domestic 



SPIKITUAL CHRISTIANITY 



sorrows may be poured into his cup, constituting the 
chastisements by which God trains and nurtures His 
people. The absence of his Lord will always leave a 
desolate feeling in his heart, only to be completely 
removed when he is with Him in glory. But, for the 
most part, the very best Christians in this land are 
permitted to dwell, each under his vine and under his 
fig-tree. And there is nothing in the aspect of Provi- 
dence to prevent them from gratifying the instincts 
of their nature, by enjoying the shade and the fruit of 
the vine and fig-tree as God intends them to be en- 
joyed ; or from trying to get for their less fortunate 
neighbours a home as peaceful, and a shade as refresh- 
ing. Only let them bear in mind that they are run- 
ning a race, and fighting a fight : that therefore they 
must not let themselves be entangled with the things 
of earth ; but do as St. Paul did, — " I keep under my 
body, and bring it into subjection ; lest that by any 
means, when I have preached to others, I myself 
should be a cast-away.' ' 

I have spent a great deal of time on what is but 
the negative side of my subject — in trying to remove 
a misconception often connected with the exhortations 
of Scripture as to renouncing and overcoming the 
world. I go on now to the more positive side — to 
consider the sense in which the world is intended to 
be possessed and enjoyed by the children of God. 

1. Here let us consider, in the first place, how God has 
actually made this world for man, and given it to him ; 
and how he has stored it with every thing that is fitted 
to minister to man's advantage or to man's enjoyment. 
Not only so, but he has furnished him with instincts, 



IN RELATION TO SECULAR PROGRESS. 



85 



that in their most natural and legitimate exercise, 
seek for these things, and take pleasure in them. 
Can we suppose, then, that He who has thus stored 
the earth for man, and provided man with the instincts 
that crave these stores, can be ill-pleased with him 
when engaged in securing them ? Bear in mind (as 
we have already seen), how good cause God would 
have to be displeased if this were done in the spirit 
of the prodigal son, — if the gifts of God were severed 
from God himself, and we were to banish Him from 
the provision He has made for our good. But we 
are supposing a different state of things. We have 
returned to our Father's house. We never desire to 
be absent from Him any more. We dread every thing 
that would tempt us to an unfilial spirit towards 
Him. What we find around us, we regard as His gifts 
to us, and it is as such we would use and enjoy them. 
It is impossible that God can be but pleased with 
those that seek in this spirit to possess and enjoy the 
things of earth. You need not fear, in this spirit, to 
gratify the ^instincts that go after temporal good. 
You may gratify your love of property, your love of 
beauty, your love of comfort, your love of society, 
your love of recreation. Of course there are limits 
to be observed in these pursuits ;* but if, within 
these limits, you engage in them as pursuits and 
pleasures which God designs for you, and for which 
he has adapted you, you may do so without any 
feeling of uneasiness, or uncertainty whether you are 
right or wrong. He giveth us all things richly to 

* Limits of two kinds ; the limit imposed by the effect on our 
own highest good; and the limit imposed by the effect on the 
spiritual good of others. (See 1 Cor. vi. 12 and 1 Cor. x. 23.) 



86 



SPIKITUAL CHEISTIANITY. 



enjoy. Every creature of God is good, and not to be 
refused, if it be received with thanksgiving. You 
need not mar your comfort in the enjoyment of them, 
by thinking that it would be better to deny yourselves 
every thing of the kind. Why should the children 
not eat the children's bread? Why should we shut 
our eyes to the beauty that was meant to delight us ? 
Why should we refuse the banquet that was prepared 
expressly for our sake ? 

Instead, therefore, of blackening and depreciating 
this world and all that belongs to it, it seems much 
more filial, much more pious, and much more 
wholesome, to dwell with delight on its manifold 
beauties and advantages, and rejoice in them as 
tokens of God's fatherly love for his children. What 
beautiful objects this world presents to our view — - 
what lovely sights, what wealth of musical sounds ! 
What a glorious sky above us, what a Sun to 
brighten it by day, what gems to sparkle in it by 
night ! What a wonderful Ocean to girdle our shores, 
what rivers, and streams, and prattling brooks and 
burns! What majestic mountains and smiling valleys ! 
Yes, truly, " The earth, Lord, is full of thy riches ! " 
And how interesting, and pleasant, and manifold, are 
the social enjoyments connected with this world ! The 
joys of childhood, the merry sports of little children, the 
happy scenes of early home — the pleasures of friendship, 
your walks and talks with intimate friends, to whom 
you can pour out every thought and feeling of your 
heart — the happiness of congenial marriage, the 
brightness and freshness of domestic bliss, the in- 
terest connected with the birth and growth of 
children, especially if they turn out helps to their 



IN RELATION TO SECULAE PROGRESS. 



87 



parents and blessings to the world — the pleasures of 
knowledge, of travel, of change of scene — the pleasures 
of taste and of fancy — the satisfaction there is in well 
done work, the joy of doing your duty, the pleasure 
of earning your wages, or receiving your salary, or 
realising the profit of honest business (for I am not 
going to leave that out) — the still greater pleasure of 
helping the needy, cheering the hearts of the down- 
cast, receiving the blessing of him that was ready to 
perish. Really, brethren, if this world be a wilder- 
ness, it is not the desert of Sahara ; it is a wilderness 
well provided with palm-groves and wells of water, 
rich in manifold refreshments for the pilgrims that 
have to traverse it. It is plain that it was and is the 
intention of the gracious Creator, that human life 
should be cheered and brightened by these manifold 
sources of enjoyment ; and that the life that is spent 
in absolute darkness and barrenness, is not spent in a 
wholesome manner. It is not for me, as a creature 
and child of God, to depreciate these blessings, or 
train myself to despise them. Rather let me thank 
Him for His goodness, and do what I can that others 
may share it, and with me bless His holy name. 
And if I find that by the social arrangements of the 
community, a large portion of my fellow-men are shut 
out from most or many of these cheering influences, 
and left to plod weary and uncheered along hard and 
dusty highways, is it no part of my duty to try to get 
them brought under the blessings which God designed 
for the sweetening and brightening of their life? 
True it is, these things will be real blessings to them 
only when they return to God in Christ as their 
Father, and accept of them as his kind gift ; and for 



88 



SPIKITUAL CHEISTIANITY 



my part, I will always put that in the foreground, and 
I will always tell them that God's love and favour 
in Christ is far the best gift of any, even though 
the fig-tree should not blossom, and no herd should 
be in the stall ; but I will not for that reason leave 
them without any share of temporal joys and refresh- 
ments. I will not say to myself, " It is not good for 
these people to be too well off— when Jeshurun waxed 
fat, he kicked, they are the better to feel that they 
are but pilgrims and strangers here." That lesson I 
will leave in God's hands — the only hands in which 
it can be left with safety. I will labour to supply 
my fellow-men with some of those earthly enjoyments 
for which their hearts are often blindly yearning ; all 
the more, that if these be not supplied to them, they 
are so liable to plunge recklessly into the deadly 
depths of sensual indulgence. 

2. But again, let us consider that God has not only 
given to man the earth as it is, to be possessed and 
enjoyed, but he has told him to subdue it and have 
dominion over it; thus giving him the prospect of 
getting much more out it, if he investigate its laws 
and properties and bend these to his use. The world 
we dwell in is an indefinitely improveable world ; it 
is designed by God to be improved, and the improve- 
ment of it is intended for the greater welfare of the 
human race. And this improvement can only be 
effected through investigation of its laws, and applica- 
tion of these to the nature and circumstances of man. 
This business of investigation and application would 
have been one of man's chief employments in an un- 
fallen condition; and in his present state, a strong 
natural instinct is ever impelling him towards it. All 



IN RELATION TO SECULAR PROGRESS. 



89 



persons, therefore, who are engaged in the investiga- 
tion of nature, in any branch or form, or in the appli- 
cation of natural resources to the wants of man, are 
doing a work that has God's approval and blessing, if 
only they do it in a right filial spirit. Inquirers into 
the laws of matter, the laws of mind, the laws of 
health, the laws of taste, the laws of commerce, the 
laws of social order and political well-being ; pro- 
moters of intercourse between one part of the globe and 
another ; travellers in unexplored regions ; traders 
who bring the fulness of one region to supply the 
wants of another ; devisers of improvements who 
make the resources of nature available for a larger 
measure of good ; workers in the busy system by 
which the world's stores are spread over the whole 
family ; teachers, authors, writers, who scatter the 
light that has been already gathered, and give the im- 
pulse to seek for more, — all these, and all such as 
these, I regard as one way or other implementing 
the great command to possess the earth and have 
dominion over it, and aiding in accomplishing the 
great divine design for the increased comfort and well- 
being of man. It is true — alas ! that it should be so — 
that many of them — how many I do not like to think 
— are doing this blindly, not because it is God's will, 
not because it is God's design, but simply because 
their own unchastened instincts or their own worldly 
interests urge them to this course. If only they did 
it in a filial spirit, seeking to work as God's children 
according to His will and for His glory, it would be 
every way blessed work. The scenes of this busy 
world, our crowded thoroughfares, our hives of industry, 
our railways, our ships, our schools of learning and of 



90 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY 



science, how blessed it would be if the predominant 
idea suggested by them were — not a race for riches, not 
a struggle for distinction, but a great scheme of filial 
duty, in which the great army of workers were animated 
by a desire to fulfil a father's design, and by subduing 
the earth at once glorify Him, benefit themselves, and 
bless the world ! 

Now, this is the thought that spiritual Christianity 
has got to supply. Don't let us disparage the work. 
Don't let us be so ready as we preachers sometimes 
are, to depreciate secular employments. Don't let us 
shake our heads in despair at the secular activity of 
the age. Don't let us turn pale at the discoveries of 
science, Don't let us look askance at any of these 
things. The work in itself is good and right, part of 
a Divine scheme, the issue of which is to be greatly 
for the benefit of the world. But let us say to the 
busy workers, Don't carry on the work on an inde- 
pendent footing. Don't labour at your own hand or 
for your ends merely ; but try to work in a true filial 
and loyal spirit ; work as God's workers, as labourers 
in God's vineyard ; and that God not a vague imper- 
sonality, not a mere algebraic sign, not the god of the 
pantheist, but the one, living, personal God ; the God 
with whom you have to do ; the God and Father of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ— the God from 
whom you have wandered, but who invites you to re- 
turn to Him ; without whom life can never be blessed, 
but with whom all honest work will have a fresh and 
living interest, and will command the blessing that 
maketh rich, and with which He addeth no sorrow. 

There is a notion we sometimes hear propounded 
by secularists, that if this task of exploring the laws 



IN RELATION TO SECULAR PROGRESS. 



91 



of nature, and applying the resources of the world 
were once accomplished, man would have Providence, 
so to speak, very much in his own hands ; — in fact, 
it is a secularist formula, that " science is the Provi- 
dence of life." When the laws of nature are thoroughly 
explored, it is said, men will no longer be at the 
mercy of those hidden evils which have often been so 
disastrous to them ; they will know all about these 
things, and be able to shape their course accordingly. 
As the serpent said to Eve, they shall be as gods, 
knowing good and evil. But even at the best, this 
escape from dependence on Providence cannot be 
looked for till the secrets of nature are all laid bare ; 
and if, as some of these persons say, man has been on 
earth more than a hundred thousand years, and if his 
future progress in discovering the secrets of nature be 
not more rapid than the past, it will be long enough, 
in all conscience, to the era of emancipation ! But if 
man pursues his work with a right spirit, surely the 
very remotest desire he can have will be, to be inde- 
pendent of Providence. If he cherishes the filial 
spirit — if he is a fellow-worker with God, — if, in all 
his worldly work, he has the desire to carry out God's 
plan, and to benefit God's family, — surely a consum- 
mation that would in a manner supersede dependence 
on the personal God, is the very last he w^ould think 
of. It is in the very opposite direction that we would 
most earnestly urge him to go ; " nearer to God " is the 
aspiration that should ever be on his lip ; and the 
nearer he comes, the deeper will be his satisfaction in 
the thought — " This God is my God for ever and ever ; 
He will be my guide even unto death." 

3. Once more let us consider how, according to the 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY 



Bible, Christians are to use this world as a sphere of A 
service to God, and of doing good to man. In this j $ 
view we shall find that the principle of looking for- ft 
ward to the future life encourages instead of destroy- t 
ing the habit of diligence in our calling, and stimu- i 
lates the desire to do good to our fellow-men in every I 
available way. j & 

If there were no vital connection between the two . t 
states ; if the common employments of this world ii 
were utterly alien from the next ; if the one were t 1 
quite unfitted to form or exercise the graces and habits li 
appropriate to the other, it might be granted that the I 
more you lived in the future, the less would you be i 
fitted for the present. And hence, if you should hold [ 
that it is only when you are engaged in exercises di- , c 
rectly religious that you are serving God or preparing I 
for heaven, it must follow that the more religious men 
become, the less interest can they feel in the ordinary i 
work of the world. But, certainly, this is not the i 
doctrine of the Bible. The Bible expressly and re- ] 
peatedly exalts the lawful callings of Christians, and < 
encourages them to work on by the consideration, that i ! 
fidelity to worldly duty is an act of service to the Lord. 
The Bible teaches us to look on the whole surround- 
ings of our worldly lot as a rough but wholesome 
school, where, by God's help, all manner of virtues 
and graces must be formed and exercised, — those j 
virtues and graces that will have their home in heaven. 
Faith in God, fidelity to Christ, love to man ; truth, 
mercy, honesty, forbearance, generosity, meekness, 
and many more, must gather strength and influence, 
from the very roughness a ad unpropitiousness of the 
climate in which they grow. Hence the better a 



IN RELATION TO SECULAR PROGRESS. 



93 



Christian does his worldly work, and the more he 
makes it the occasion of exercising such graces as 
these, the higher will be his reward in heaven. Nay, 
who can tell, but there may be a much closer connec- 
tion than we see between the particular phase of our 
life here, and our form of service hereafter ? In the 
case of King David, there was a connection between 
his early life as a shepherd and his later life as a king ; 
in the case of the apostles, there was a connection be- 
tween their first employment as fishermen, and their 
last as fishers of men ; and who can tell whether, in 
the infinite wisdom of God, there may not be some 
important bearing, in the pursuits of Christian car- 
penters, and merchants, and students, and teachers, 
on the particular mode of service in which God is to 
employ them hereafter ? 

If such be the case, to live much in the future 
implies no disregard of the duties of the present, but 
the very reverse. Does a youth at school or college 
pursue his studies less diligently that he often thinks 
of a glowing future, for which his education is fitting 
him ? Does an apprentice do the drudgery of his 
office less carefully that he sometimes fancies himself 
a merchant-prince, remembering, however, that nothing 
but diligence and perseverance can ever make him so ? 
More especially, if he have a strong filial spirit — a 
strong regard and love for his father, and if the burden 
of every letter he receives from his father be, " Do 
well your present work, never fancy yourself above it, 
— you may not see the advantage of it, but be assured 
that fidelity and diligence in youth, are the sure and 
indispensable forerunners of success and honour in 
after life.'' So with the spiritual Christian. God has 



SPIEITUAL CHEISTIANITY 



given him a work to do in this world, and told him to 
do it well. God has encouraged him to look forward 
to a better life, and to draw hope and inspiration from 
the thought of it, and patience under the troubles and 
trials of time. If there be anything genuine in his < 
religion, he will do his work well. He will do it all 
the better, for living in the future, for walking by faith 
not by sight, for having his treasure in heaven. He 
will feel that he is entrusted with his Father's honour; 
and the love he bears to him will make him doubly 
careful that in all he does, he be found faithful. 

And thus, as spiritual Christianity, with its habit 
of living in the future, does not hinder but help a man 
in his own sphere of earthly duty, so neither does it 
hinder but help undertakings which have for their 
object to relieve temporal suffering, and promote tem- 
poral good. In spite of the confident remarks of 
secularists, I would make appeal here to facts. Time 
prevents me from entering into details; I content 
myself with quoting a sentence from the admirable 
work of de Liefde, just published, on the " Charities 
of Europe." "I have been always of opinion that 
nowhere could a better proof of the divine origin of 
Christianity and of the truth of the Gospel be found, 
than in the story, simply told, of some charitable insti- 
tutions. Whatever the Christian religion may ap- 
parently have in common with other religions, this 
much is certain, that true, self-denying charity, which 
seeks the lost, loves the poor, and consoles the sufferer, 
is exclusively its own. There never were such things 
as charities known in heathendom, however civilised ; 
nor were they even known in Israel before He appeared 
who taught His people to love their enemies, and to 



IN RELATION TO SECULAR PROGEESS. 95 

exercise charity towards the harlot, the publican, and 
the sinner." 

So also, facts might be supplied to show, that even 
where spiritual Christianity has given its influence to 
encourage sufferers to bear their wrongs patiently, and 
comfort themselves with the hope of the better life, it 
has more effectually removed these wrongs than if it 
had declared open war against them. Such was the 
course followed in the New Testament in regard to 
slaves and slavery, for example : and yet, as Mr. Isaac 
Taylor remarked, more then twenty years ago, " the 
deep working principle of Christianity — its force of 
love, as it slowly developes itself, and becomes better 
understood, and takes a firmer hold of all minds, and 
raises the standard of humane feeling, must render 
slavery every year less and less tolerable, within 
christianised communities — must at length expel it 
from the bosom of civilization — must drive it further 
and further outward into the wilds of society, and 
leave it, seen and confessed as such, a sheer curse, 
resting upon the heads and homes of its infatuated 
supporters ; and at length bring it to be denounced, 
by all but savages, as a nuisance in the world, — a 
nuisance insufferable, to be swept away at whatever 
risk."* 

So far, then, from admitting that spiritual Christian- 
ity, rightly understood, is the opponent, or even the 
lukewarm friend of secular progress, I hold that it is 
the very reverse. It smiles on the efforts of science, 
and civilization, and social reformation; and it sup- 
plies the great moving spring of philanthropy, the 
unwearied heavenly love that goes forth, like its Mas- 

* " Spiritual Christianity," p. 120. 



96 



SPIEITUAL CHRISTIANITY, ETC. 



ter, to seek and to save that which was lost. The hope 
of the world, and especially of its down-trodden and* 
suffering masses, lies in spiritual Christianity. Where, 
if you discard it, will you find a power to take its 
place? "Does it appear'' (asks Mr. Taylor), "that 
civilization alone with its intercourse and traffic, its 
arts and its useful sciences, its town-crowding industry, 
and its disorderly peopling of wildernesses — its hurry 
and impatience of restraint — its intensity of individual 
will, and its contempt of authority — its uncontrollable 
sway of the masses — its unlooked for upturns and 
reverses, its passionate pursuit of momentary advan- 
tages, and its appetite for such gratifications as may be 
snatched at in all haste — does it appear that civiliza- 
tion alone (Christian influence not considered) is likely 
much to promote the personal and home-felicity of 
the millions it is summoning into life? Judging of 
what is future from what we see around us, dare we 
look to mere civilization as worthy to be trusted with 
the moral, or even with the physical well-being of the 
human family, and with the guardianship of the 
generation next coming up ? Dare we, if we had the 
infant human race in our arms, dare we turn ourselves 
to that care-worn personage, our modern civilization, 
sitting at her factory gate, and say to her, ' Take this 
child, and nurse it for me?"' 

Nay, verily. But if so, we must find the child's true 
mother. And the true mother must care for her child. 



THE PUEPOSE AND FORM OE HOLY 
SCRIPTURE. 

BY THE 

REV. ANDREW CRICHTON. 



G 



The work of the teacher often is to nnteach rather 
than to teach ; and the work of the learner, to unlearn 
rather than to learn. To put it more specifically : the 
clearing away of mistakes and misconceptions, and 
the bringing of the matter to a definite issue, is, very 
often, virtually, the vindication of the truth, and the 
settlement of the vexed question. In the case, of con- 
troversies about the Bible, particularly, of difficulties 
in the way of accepting the Bible as being throughout, 
what I believe that it claims to be, divine and autho- 
ritative, this is especially so. The Bible has been 
made responsible for things for which it did not 
make itself responsible ; has had its veracity and au- 
thority perilled on doctrines and practices which alto- 
gether want its endorsation ; has been found guilty of 
offences which it never committed ; has lost what 
seemed a chief, if not the chief, cornerstone, and, lo ! 
it stands where it did, safe and luminous as ever. 
Like those palimpsests, those ancient manuscripts, 
classic and precious, which have been written over 
and concealed by some foolish monkish legend, and 
which the scholar finds, to his joy, plain and complete 
when the later inscription has been effaced ; or those 



100 THE PUEPOSE AND FOKM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 



paintings, of great masters perhaps, which the skilful 
picture-cleaner discovers and restores from beneath 
the daubing of a later and feebler hand — the Bible, as 
it is in its very self, its nature and claims, has some- 
times got crusted over with traditional notions and 
interpretations, has been charged with the folly and 
futility of these, and must gradually come forth from 
beneath them, the very mind of the Spirit, and of the 
Spirit -moved men of old, divinely authoritative and 
divinely true. 

The best defence of the Bible is tojbe foun^^ un- 
derstanding it. It grows luminous while one looks. 
The best solvent of difficulties is a free, full, fair in- 
terpretation. As scientific inquirers peruse the volume 
of nature, so let Biblical students peruse the Book of 
God. Surely the reverence of spirit and self-denying 
diligence of the former should be far surpassed by 
those of the latter. I believe that indolence is at the 
bottom of many of the difficulties — indolence, which 
shrinks from the task of piercing beneath the super- 
ficial inconsistency to its deeper-lying solution ; and 
that ignorance — the ignorance of the individual in- 
quirer, or the ignorance of a progressive but still im- 
mature hermeneutic — is at the bottom of the rest* 

* " It costs much to disbelieve ; it requires submission to our God 
and his grace to believe. The temptation of this age is to try 
to find a middle path between faith and unbelief ; to say that 
' there is much to be said on both sides to think that all things 
must be uncertain in themselves, because many of the persons 
around us are at sea as to all things, as if one thought all things to 
be in a whirl, because they seemed so to our neighbours who had 
dizzied themselves ; to be browbeaten out of belief ; to shrink 
from avowing a steadfast adherence to that which must be old 
because it is eternal, and which must be unchangeable because it is 



THE PUEPOSE AND FORM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 10 J 



I have hope, then, that I may sweep away some 
misconceptions, and may obviate some difficulties, if I 
direct attention for a little to some proveable charac- 
teristics of Holy Scripture, which I group together 
under the general title of its purpose and form ; my 
course of thought naturally leading me to bring out 
more especially its humanity, which the orthodox 
doctrine of inspiration holds to be as inseparable from 
its divinity, as the humanity is inseparable from the 
divinity of Christ. 

The first and most general truth about Holy Scrip- 
ture is that it is a book-revelation. How it came to 
be so, it is not our work here to inquire. The ques- 
tions of inspiration and the canon do not fall within 
our present plan. It is a book, or written, revelation. 
There is also an oral revelation, to the recording of 
which part of the written revelation is devoted. It is 
important for us to connect these two together. Why 
God should so order it that his revelation should, after 
a certain period, become written instead of spoken, is 
surely plain enough. The prophesyings of individual 
prophets were limited in their reach, were addressed 
to comparatively few, were for a season and a time. 
How natural and how blessed that the many prophetic 
voices should blend in this one prophetic voice, speak- 
ing to all the ages and all the world ! It is important 
to connect the oral and written together as in fact the 
same thing. This book is the prophesying of the 
prophets, is the written-out or printed preaching of 

truth ; to pick something out of revelation which, it thinks, will 
not be gainsaid, and to relegate all else to be matter of opinion ; 
an indolent, conceited, soft, weak, pains-hating trifling with the 
truth of God." — Dr Pusey on Daniel the Prophet, p. 561. 



102 THE PUEPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 

those ancient preachers ; who, however, differed from • 
other preachers in ancient and modern times in this, ! s 
that they spoke and wrote as moved by the Holy f 
Ghost. I need scarcely explain here that the use of c 
prophecy to mean prediction or foretelling is a narrow 1 
and not very scriptural one. A prophet was simply a 
a supernaturally-endowed preacher. The Bible, in i 
narrative, and exhortation, and prediction, and psalm, ( 
and familiar epistle, is simply, so to speak, discourse I 
after discourse, prophesying after prophesying. Moses, i 
and Samuel, and David, and Paul, and John are here I 
in writing, instead of in audible speech. The spoken 
and the written revelation are one. They have the 
same character and obey the same laws. Difficulties 
in the case of the one tell equally in the case of the 
other. 

But this is only throwing the question of the need 
of a book-revelation a little further back. Is it ne- 
cessary to suppose, that, by prophet or Bible, God has 
ever spoken to man at all ? 

That there must be revelation of some sort, follows, I 
think, from the idea of a personal God. Eevelation and 
atheism, it has been said, are the alternatives ; or, if the 
second be not atheism, it is pantheism at least — pan- 
theism, in which humanity, by becoming s^-conscious, 
will attain its knowledge of God. If you are a Theist at 
all, the absence of revelation, a terrible silence between 
earth and heaven, is inconceivable to you— impossible. 
The God who speaks not is not, or is not God. If the 
supernatural find no voice, no open way whereby to 
break in on the world of nature and of human life, 
then it is not, is not at least to the world and to 
humanity. 



THE PURPOSE AND FORM OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 103 

But there is a revelation, it may yet be said, not 
supernatural — a revelation in nature and humanity. 
God has spoken when he created — speaks on in that 
continual creation which we call providence. " The 
light of nature sheweth there is a God." Humanity 
and the world retain the impress of the eternal die, 
with which they were stamped at first. Without 
oral teaching or written word, our hearts would con- 
fess God and open themselves to God. There is 
reason : there is conscience. There is a human virtue : 
there is a human truth. 

It were a very mistaken honouring of the Bible 
that would deny that — though Biblical defenders have 
sometimes delighted to undervalue the light of 
nature, and to deny to mankind, apart from revelation, 
any virtue, any truth. I believe this to be a sort of 
Nihilism. I believe this to make " God a deceiver, 
and humanity a lie." St Paul said that the Gentiles 
" having not the law, are a law unto themselves." * 
They have a Bible, they have a revelation, apart from 
this Bible and this revelation ; the natural and the 
supernatural are alike true and authoritative. Sceptics 
against conscience are little better than sceptics against 
Scripture. 

But you are forgetting the fact of the fall, it may be 
said. This natural revelation is in fact obliterated. 
The Bible of man's heart is a blank page, or a page 
disfigured with all that is dark, or grotesque, or vile. 
I do not forget the fact of the fall ; but the fall has 
not made reasonable and responsible beings into 
sticks and stones. That is not the meaning of 
spiritual death. There is a virtue and a truth — a 

* Romans ii. 14, 15. 



104 THE PUEPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 



moral science or philosophy — a natural ethic and 4 

natural theology, drawn not from the Bible but from tl 

the conscience of the race. I admit the corruption si 

of man's nature, but deny that it makes him a devil on a 

the one hand, or a mere insensate stone on the other.* o 

There being then a natural revelation—a revelation b 

containing in it not only physical but also moral truth, \ 

it may be said, and it has been said, that a supernatural t 

revelation, a book revelation like that of the Bible, is t 

simply unnecessary. There never was a more mistaken t 

conclusion. I have shewn that I am no enemy to the j 

:' i 

* " Nevertheless, as regards its capacity of recognising both the 
character and the authority of divine law, the conscience is upon 
the whole intact. The corruption of our nature has not so vitiated 
the conscience as to invalidate its conclusions, where it discri- 
minates between right and wrong, or deprive it of its right to rule 
and to be obeyed. If it had, our guilt would have been less, and 
our recovery would have been impossible. For it is through the 
conscience alone that a fallen, but yet free, intelligence can be 
reached. It is to the conscience that the violated law appeals. 
It is the conscience that accepts the sentence of condemnation. 
It is the conscience that pleads guilty of sin as the transgression 
of the law, and welcomes the assurance of a sufficient expiation, 
and an adequate satisfaction." 

" From the beginning God revealed Himself and His will, by 
means of words, to men. He spoke to them of his own character, 
purposes, and plans. He placed them under an explicit and formal 
obligation of obedience to an explicit and formal commandment. 
That, however, does not impeach either the competency of reason 
to prove the truths of natural religion, or the competency of con- 
science to establish the principles of natural morality. It is of the 
utmost consequence, for the interests of revelation itself, to vindi- 
cate the independent validity, both of natural theology and of 
natural ethics ; to assert not the sufficiency, indeed, but the 
legitimacy and trustworthiness of the light of reason and the 
jurisdiction of conscience." — '.Reason and Revelation/ by Dr. 
Candlish, pp. 107 and 123. 



THE PUEPOSE AND F0EM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 105 

doctrine of a light of nature, but I say unhesitatingly 
that it is insufficient. Taking it at its very best- — 
supposing the moral nature of man to be as when he 
was created, the moral conceptions and convictions 
of man to be Edenic in their purity, there w^ould still 
be much that they could not reach or discover ; a 
knowledge of God and fellowship with God which 
would be utterly beyond them. And so, we find that, 
before the fall, apart from the fall altogether, God 
entered into supernatural communication with man. 
A<Jagi, otherwise than reflected in his own heart and 
injbhe ^assy^treams^of^Eden, saw the face of God, 
And I think it is plain that, fall or no fall, there 
would have been revelation of a supernatural kind ; 
the contents in great measure different, the method of 
it unknown to us, but still, revelation. 

For I take it that this inward light in man, this 
natural revelation, is, more than anything else, a kind 
of receptivity, a possibility of divine intercourse and 
inhabitation. It is the image of God in which God 
made man, that man might be able to behold the face, 
and hear the voice, and know, in a measure, the nature 
and the will, of God. This, in any case, in the best of 
cases. How much more necessary since the fall has 
revelation become, necessary to restore what has been 
lost, as well as to lead upwards and onwards in 
the knowledge of God ! The_stamgstnight of nature 
yearns for the revelations of the supernatural dawn ; 
how much more the starless night with its utterly 
unillumined gloom ! The Protevangelium was given 
by God in the very hour of the fall. 

We have now before us, all the materials for a 
settlement of the controversy, — which, in one form or 



106 THE PUEPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 

another, must be familiar, — as to the relation between 
nature and revelation, as to the relation, particularly, 
between reason or conscience and the Bible. The 
negative party have arraigned the Scripture at the bar 
of reason and conscience, and condemned it there. 
The positive party have sometimes, from confusion of 
mind, seemed to deny to reason and conscience any 
standing in the matter whatever * The truth, I believe, 
lies between those two positions. There is a natural and 
a supernatural revelation — a light from within and a 
light from without, and the one is as certain and divine 
as the other. With this difference, that, by reason of 
corruption and darkness, the real utterances of the 
voice within are hard to ascertain. Still they may be 
ascertained— it is possible for men in their natural 
state, to distinguish in some measure between right 
and wrong, between true and false ; and so, if the 
oracle without and the oracle within contradict each 
other, it is a conflict not of God with man, but of God 
with God, for in the image of God made he man; not 
of authorities subordinate and supreme, but of autho- 
rities co-ordinate with each other, authorities, in fact, 
which, if you trace them to their fountain, are not two 
but one, not different but the same. Such contradic- 
tion of course is impossible, and, if it seem to occur, you 
are obliged to say, — this is not reason or conscience, 
on the one side ; or this is not Scripture, on the other! 

I fortify myself here with the words of Bishop But- 
ler— « Now," says he, " what is the just consequence 
from all these things ? Not that reason is no judge 
of what is offered to us as being of divine revelation. 

* Vide Birks' " Bible and Modern Thought," page 343. 



THE PURPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 1 07 



For this would be to infer, that we are unable to judge 
of anything, because we are unable to judge of all 
things. Eeason can, and it ought to judge, not only 
of the meaning but also of the morality and the evi- 
dence of revelation. First, It is the province of rea- 
son to judge of the morality of the Scripture ; that is, 
not whether it contains things different from what we 
should have expected from a wise, just and good 
being ; for objections from hence have now been 
obviated, but whether it contains things plainly con- 
tradictory to wisdom, justice or goodness, to what the 
light of nature teaches us of God."* I hold with 
Bishop Butler. I see no escape from this. The real 
cause of the dread, which many have, of this co-ordi- 
nation, if you like to call it so, of the natural and 
supernatural revelations — of conscience and the Bible, 
is to be found in the misapplication of the principle. 
My resource, in every alleged difference between the 
two, would be either, on the one hand, that reason 
and conscience were applied to matters beyond their 
field, to the answering of questions which transcend 
them altogether, or that their utterance was misread ; 
or, on the other hand, that the Bible was misinter- 
preted, made responsible for things of which it did 
not itself assume the responsibility ; its approbations 
and disapprobations, its narrative of the teaching and 
practice of men, and its own teaching and practice, 
confounded with each other. Patience, I believe, 
will solve every difficulty ; when the fire of scrutiny 
has burned itself out, the residuum will be found to 
be gold, yea, most fine gold. 

* Butler's Analogy, Part II., cap, 3* 



108 THE PURPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

To the heart of man the Bible comes, and finds a 
response to it there ; its choicest evidence there. It 
speaks a known language ; it supplies a more or less 
conscious, always terribly actual need. If there were 
nothing in man that responded to it, nothing that leapt 
forth to meet it, its oracles would be melancholy 
enigmas — to the heart that lied it would seem a lie. 
Something like this, and yet infinitely removed from 
this, is seen, when the Word of God addresses itself 
to the unrenewed heart, and the Holy Spirit is not 
given. It is intelligible, and yet not intelligble. It 
offers needed help, but there is a barrier between. 
Its voice is not unknown, but strangely sounding, and 
from afar. But, let the Holy Spirit illumine the 
blind eyes and warm the cold heart ; which He does, 
not by giving eyes where there were none, and a 
heart where there was none, but by kindling the eye 
with light, and making the old heart new ; and then 
the divine in man confesses the divine in Scrip- 
ture ; spirit leaps forth to meet with spirit ; conscience 
and the Bible meet and embrace, like an older and a 
newer messenger from the same Lord — and thus, an 
evidence is constituted, and a faith in the divine 
verity of holy writ implanted, against which the 
wildest surges of objection and difficulty must dash 
themselves in vain. 

(^Dealing now, more strictly, with the form of Scrip- 
ture, we find, in the second place, that it is of various 
authorship, and belongs to various ages of the Church's 
history. A firm belief in the unity of the Bible is 
quite consistent with a continual remembrance of the 
fact that, while it is one book, it is also many books, 
that its divine unity utters itself through a wonderfully 



THE PUEPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 109 

varied humanity. From Moses to St. John, whose 
gospel is perhaps the latest, as it is certainly the 
grandest, book in the Bible, are a decade and a half of 
centuries. The Biblical period is the most brilliant 
in the history of the world ; it covers the whole field 
of the noblest of the ancient civilizations. The great- 
est days, that both east and west have known, fall with- 
in it, "While the world was building up its highest 
kingdoms was built up the kingdom of Messiah. 
Amidst the most magnificent products of human intel- 
lect grew up this Book, which needs a divine as well 
as human mind for its explanation. 

Now, in orderjio exaltjthe divine in the Bible, it is 
not at all necessary to depreciate the human. There 
are frequent misapplications made of the Scriptural 
saying, that God hath chosen the weak things of the 
world to confound the things that are mighty* Weak, 
here, does not mean so much, actually and veritably 
weak, as weak, measured by the world's standard and 
in the world's esteem. You may take human intellect 
at its very highest and attribute it to the Bible, and 
you will find that it does not explain what you find 
there, that the miracle of inspiration is as great as 
ever. The difference, in height, between Arthur Seat 
and Mont Blanc, does not appreciably diminish the 
distance between Arthur Seat and the stars ; and the 
difference, between the greatest and the least of men, 
is but a drop in the infinite ocean of the distance be- 
tween man and God. 

Looking^atthe Bible itself, apart from any theory 
about it, we find it, on its human side, to be the work 



* 1 Cor. i. 27. 



110 THE PUEPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 

of men, all of them with more or less of intellectual 
force and greatness, and some of them towering like 
high mountain-peaks above the rest. Some at least 
of these books are written by men, who, in their own 
time, were without a peer, and who, to this hour, re- 
main enrolled among the mightiest of mankind — the 
leading minds of the world. Think of Moses, with his 
manifold culture, the richest and rarest of these early 
times, and his extraordinary grasp of the principles on 
which society and national life are built : one to whom 
the Eoman Numa is but a child. Think of David the 
Psalmist, who, as a poet, belongs not to the Bible only 
but to humanity. Think of Solomon, whom the 
queen of Sheba came from afar to see. Think of 
Isaiah. Think of Daniel, the highest subject, both in 
Babylon and Media. Think of Paul, apart from his 
inspiration altogether, a scholar, thinker, theologian. 
Think of John, of whose personal history the Bible 
tells us little, but about whom, from earliest Church 
tradition, we gather what we had otherwise been led to 
suspect, that he is not unworthy to be named with the 
Grecian Plato. These men, uninspired, would have 
been great men still, in action or in thought. Their 
divine mission roused their slumbering powers : their 
inspiration of God made divine meanings and truths 
to flow along the channel of their human thought and 
speech. I think it might be shown that, in the Bible, 
God illustrates those principles of His acting, that 
" whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall 
have more abundance/'* and that "to whomsoever 
much is given, of him shall be much required/'-)* To 



* Matt. xiii. 12 



f Luke xii. 48. 



THE PUEPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. Ill 



the greater men He has given the greater message, to 
the lesser men the less ; using each, not lawlessly, capri- 
ciously, but according to his capabilities, his circum- 
stances, his character, his personal history ; so that, in 
this holy book, there are none of the spasms, convul- 
sions, incoherences of heathen oracles or diabolic pos- 
session, but the strong, quiet, healthful outcome of 
thoughts and words divine through all their human- 
ness. Yea, as in Christ himself, the divine and human 
are sweetly wedded, sweetly work together, till, in the 
one intense light, you cannot distinguish the stronger 
and the feebler ray. 

Now, all this, which I hold to be quite reconcileable 
with the strictest doctrine of inspiration, nay, to be 
distinctly involved therein, makes the humanity of 
Scripture a lawful and important subject of study as 
well as its divineness. But, at this point, I meet with, 
and must distinctly protest against, that system, or 
rather method, of interpretation, defended by Profes- 
sor Jowett, in his exquisitely beautiful and exqui- 
sitely unsound essay, in Essays and Eeviews, and, if 
not defended, very largely proceeded on, for example 
by Dean Stanley and other writers of the same school * 
The foundation principle of this system is, that the 
Bible is to be interpreted just like any other book — 
that is, that you are to go to it without a theory, and 
use the same canons of interpretation as you would 
use, in dealing with Plato or with Shakspeare.*f" There 

* Vide Dean Stanley, " The Bible, its Form and Substance." 

t " What remains may be comprised in a few precepts, or rather 
is the expansion of a single one. Interpret the Scripture like any 
ether book. There are many respects in which Scripture is unlike 
any other book: these will appear in the results of such an interpre- 



112 THE PUEPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 



is a certain amount of truth in this principle ; but, 
in the application which is made of it, it is really no 
better than false. That it contains somewhat of truth | 
appears from the fact, that the writers of that school 
have made most valuable contributions to the depart- I 
ment of Introduction— to the history and literature of 
the Bible. That it contains a great deal of error ap- 
pears from the fact, that the same school — its bolder 
and more consistent men at least — have eliminated i 
from the Bible the most distinctive tenets of Christi- 
anity, and are left standing very much on the ground 
of mere natural religion. 

I accept all that is positive in the principle, but \ 
reject the negation which it contains. It is true, that j 
the meaning of an inspired writer will be largely 
elucidated, by a knowledge of his modes of thought j 
and personal chaiacter,by a knowledge of the materials 
which were before him, in the shape, of previous 
Scriptures, or previous writings not inspired, by a 
knowledge of the language which was most familiar 
to him, the style which is characteristic of him, the 
general tendencies and point of view of the time in 
which he lived. But it is not true, that his meaning 

tation. The first step is to know the meaning, and this can only 
be done in the same careful and impartial way that we ascertain 
the meaning of Sophocles or of Plato. The subordinate principles, 
which flow out of this general one, will also be gathered from the 
observation of Scripture. No other science of Hermeneutics is 
possible but an inductive one ; that is to say, one based on the 
language, and thoughts, and narrations of the sacred writers. And 
it would be well to carry the theory of interpretation no further 
than in the case of other works. Excessive system tends to create 
an impression that the meaning of Scripture is out of our reach, or 
is to be attained in some other way than by the exercise of manly 
sense and industry." Essays and "Reviews — Professor Jowett " On 
the Interpretation of Scripture." Section 3. 



THE PUKPOSE AND FOKM OF HOLY SCKIPTUKE. 11.3 

will be exhausted thus, that his words mean nothing 
but what such a mode of interpretation would 
lead you to attribute to them, had no under- 
current of divine thought — no significance for the far 
future time hid in them in germ at least. Take the 
almost creative, almost prophetic, power of human 
genius at its highest, and it is no measure whatever of 
the creative might and prophetic insight of the Book 
of God. 

Still, I firmly hold, that the interpretation of the 
Bible will be defective, unless full effect be given to 
its humanity— its humanity without error, like the 
Lord's humanity, without sin. And I believe that 
many precious meanings will be evolved, and many 
objections disposed of, by an attention to this. The 
Bible writers had the previous mental preparation 
which other writers have, used materials as other 
writers do. Traces of earlier documents in the warp 
and woof of Scripture, quotations of, or allusions to, 
sayings or writings not inspired, have introduced into 
the Bible no element of uncertainty ; the Hand that 
placed them there has taken care of that. We may 
hunt after earlier sources, or separate writings, if we 
please, of which the Bible itself frankly puts us on the 
track — books of Jasher, Chronicles of the Kings, 
Sayings and Songs of Solomon — and yet believe, that 
here, in the accomplished result, we have all the 
Scripture, and nothing but the Scripture. * 

* Vide Professor Plumptre's discourse on "the Prophets of the New 
Testament " in his recent book entitled " Theology and Life." In 
a foot-note to page 95, he gives, from the Old Testament, sixteen 
names of works, which must have formed part of the Hebrew pro- 
phetic literature, but which were not admitted into the canon of 
Scripture, and whose only memorial is due to the Bible. 

H 



114 THE PUEPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 

The orientalism of the Bible is another source of 
difficulty, and, by attention to it, many difficulties will 
be removed. Its scenery is different from that to 
which we are accustomed ; its imagery is unfamiliar. 
The eternal truths have found a form and framework, 
to understand which, we must search in the distances 
of the present, or in the history of the past. How does 
the traveller, who comes with his tale from the Desert 
and the Promised Land — from lonely Sinai — from fair 
Galilee, and snowy Hermon, and lofty Libanus — from 
the desolations of Jerusalem — from 

" Bethlehem's glade, and Carmel's haunted strand," 

make the page of Scripture gleam with light, and 
many of its darknesses unfold themselves, till the 
dim grows clear, and the old and familiar is fresh 
and new ! 

Still furthe^Jh^se^_insjgired compositions are of 
different kinds, as well as by different authors in 
different ages. There is a tendency to treat them as 
all didactic compositions on the same plan, to deal 
with the Bible as if it were a treatise, instead of being, 
as it is, a conglomerate of all the various forms in 
which thought and feeling express themselves. In a 
deep sense of the word, it is throughout didactic — a 
prophesying of many voices, as I have already said. 
But it is history — it is song or poem — it is prophetic 
rhapsody — it is aphorism or apophthegm — and the 
most systematic portions of it are in the form of 
pastoral letters. There is not one treatise on a theme 
from beginning to end : the Bible is related, at every 
step of it, to the experience of social or individual 
life. Now this fact, a sufficiently evident one, has 



THE PURPOSE AND FORM OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 115 

often been forgotten, and the forgetting of it has 
allowed a large class of difficulties to arise and 
establish themselves. The firmest belief in inspira- 
tion is quite reconcileable with recognising in Scripture 
compositions of various kinds, constructed according to, 
and obeying, the laws which rule such compositions. 

Thus, the history must be allowed to be history, 
and not an ideal narration in which moral or religious 
truth is conveyed — history, in which, the writer does 
not commit himself, nor commit God, to an approval of 
the human misdeeds or blunders which he chronicles. 
Any one, for example, who quotes the story of the 
sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter as an objection to the 
inspiration of Scripture, has forgotten this simple rule. 
Again, reported conversations, whether in the narrative 
or dramatic form, must be allowed to be such, and 
God and the inspired writer are not to be credited 
with what any of the interlocutors may say, unless 
thay have, in some ascertainable way, assumed the 
responsibility. Those who, on the one hand, refer to 
the book of Job as supplying store of objections to 
the inspiration of the Scriptures, or who, on the other, 
treat every word which is uttered by Eliphaz the 
Temanite, or Bildad the Shuhite, as divine and au- 
thoritative, have forgotten this simple principle. 
Once more, inspired psalm and song must be held, 
along with its divine fountain, to spring out of the 
depths of individual and national experience, and so, 
to be deeply tinged with the peculiarities of these ; 
true and touching for all time, just because true and 
touching for that one — not like the music breathed by 
a harp when some skilled hand has swept the strings, 
but the veritable outcome of a living human spirit, 



116 THE PUEPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 



informed, not violently, nor against its nature, but in 
sweetest harmony therewith, by the Spirit of the 
Lord * 

The modern reaction, against the mechanical view of 
inspiration, which made the books of Scripture mere 
repetitions of each other, and the writers of Scripture 
nothing but senseless instruments in the Spirit's 
hand,-f- was led by Coleridge, in his " Confessions of 
an Inquiring Spirit/' He seems to see no middle 
way, between this mechanical theory and one which 
would make it possible that Scripture should be crusted 
here and there, as a recent writer said, with " dark 
patches of human passion and error." I think I have 
showed you that there is a middle way, that an atten- 
tion to the form of Scripture reveals the fact, that in 

* See the chapter, " Critical Objections," in the very valuable 
work of Dr Bannerman, on " The Inspiration of Scripture," 

t " He (the Holy Ghost) so raised and prepared their minds, as 
that they might be capable to receive and retain those impressions 
of things which he communicated to them. So a man tunes the 
strings of an instrument that it may, in a due manner, receive the 
impressions of his finger, and give out the sound he intends. He 
did not speak in them or by them, and leave it unto the use of their 
natural faculties, their minds, and memories, to understand and 
remember the things spoken by Him, and so declare them to 
others. But He himself acted their faculties, making use of them 
to express His words, not their own conceptions. * * * * 

Secondly, He acted and guided them as to the very organs of 
their bodies, whereby they expressed the revelation which they 
had received by inspiration from him. They spake as they were 
acted by the Holy Ghost. He guided their tongues in the declara- 
tion of His revelations, as the mind of a man guideth his hand, 
in writing, to express its conceptions." Owen on the Holy Spirit. 
Book ii. cap. 1. In the case of Owen, and, doubtless, of many 
other supposed holders of the mechanical theory of Scripture, the 
whole thing is due to one-sided and extreme modes of expression, i 
like those which are employed in the passage which I have quoted. 



THE PURPOSE AND FORM OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 117 

sinless, errorless, but thoroughly natural human forms, 
the divine has made its home. And so you will find 
that his celebrated passage, which I now quote, how- 
ever it may tell against a mechanical theory of Scrip- 
ture, has no force against the true one, places no real 
difficulty in our path — " Curse ye Meroz, said the 
angel of the Lord ; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants 
thereof — sang Deborah. Was it that she called to 
mind any personal wrongs — rapine or insult — that 
she or the house of Lapidoth had received from Jabin 
or Sisera ? No ; she had dwelt under her palm-tree in 
the depth of the mountain. But she was a mother in 
Israel ; and with a mother's heart, and the vehemency 
of a mother's and a patriot's love, she had shot the 
light of love from her eyes, and poured the blessings 
of love from her lips, on the people that had jeoparded 
their lives unto the death, against the oppressors ; and 
the bitterness, awakened and borne aloft by the same 
love, she precipitated in curses on the selfish and 
coward recreants who came not to the help of the 
Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. As 
long as I have the image of Deborah before my eyes, 
and while I throw myself back into the age, country, 
circumstances, of this Hebrew Bonduca, in the not 
yet tamed chaos of the spiritual creation ; as long as I 
contemplate the impassioned, high-souled, heroic 
woman in all the prominence and individuality of 
will and character, I feel as if I were among the first 
ferments of the great affections — the proplastic waves 
of the microcosmic chaos, swelling up against, and yet 
towards, the outspread wings of the Dove, that lies 
brooding on the troubled waters. In the fierce and 
inordinate, I am made to know and be grateful for 



118 THE PUKPOSE AND FOKM OF HOLY SCKIPTUEE. 

the clearer and purer radiance that shines on a 
Christian's paths, neither blunted by the preparatory 
veil, nor crimsoned in its struggle through the all-en- 
wrapping mist of the world's ignorance ; whilst in the 
self-oblivion of these heroes of the Old Testament, 
their elevation above all low and individual interests, 
— above all, in the entire and vehement devotion of 
their whole being to the service of their divine Master, 
I find a lesson of humility, a ground of humiliation, 
and a shaming yet rousing example of faith and fealty. 
But let me once be persuaded that all these heart- 
awakening utterances of human hearts — of men of like 
faculties and passions with myself, mourning, rejoic- 
ing, suffering, triumphing — are but as a Divina corn- 
media of a superhuman — oh, bear with me if I say — 
Ventriloquist ; that the royal harper, to whom I have 
so often submitted myself, as a many-stringed instru- 
ment for his fire-tipt fingers to traverse, while every 
several nerve of emotion, passion, thought, that thrids 
the flesh and blood of our common humanity, responded 
to the touch — that this sweet Psalmist of Israel was 
himself as mere an instrument as his harp, an automa- 
ton poet, mourner, and supplicant ; all is gone — all 
sympathy at least, and all example. I listen in awe 
and fear, but likewise in perplexity and confusion of 
spirit."* 

So far as all this claims, for the Song of Deborah 
and Psalms of David, a veritable humanity as well as 
inspiration of God, I agree with it. So far as it 
ascribes to them human passion or imperfect morality, 
so denying or explaining away their inspiration of 

* Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit. Fourth Edition, page 65. 



THE PTJKPOSE AND FORM OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 119 

God, I do not agree. And, with the difficulty thus 
suggested, I shall deal under my next and concluding 
proposition, which is as follows : — 

The various compositions which form the Holy 
Scriptures are one amidst all their manifoldness, and 
proceed on a progressive plan. Unity and progress 
are two grand features of the Bible. It is many voices, 
but it is all the while one voice. The testimony of 
Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. The Bible is the his- 
tory of redemption, tells the story of the mediatorial 
kingdom of the Divine Redeemer. And it does this 
progressively. The beginning contains the end ; the 
earlier the later ; but only in germ, living germ, whose 
outgrowth and development is a necessity. The pro- 
mise, given to Adam after the fall, of the woman's seed 
who should bruise the head of the serpent, is the great 
biblical utterance on which the changes are rung, and 
the meaning of which is unfolded, down to the last 
syllable in the canon of Scripture. The sun, in the 
sky all the while, climbs slowly to its high noontide ; 
the light, kindled by God amidst the darkness of 
spiritual ruin, brightens and broadens slowly into the 
fulness of New Testament grace and truth. 

Now, the fact that the Bible is one, as I have said — 
the articulate expression of_one great thought — ac- 
counts for its antinomies, as they are called, in doc- 
trine, and also its seeming contradictions in matters of 
fact. It would appear at first sight that its writers 
contradict each other ; nay, sometimes contradict 
themselves. Their statements are always partial, one- 
sided, and not systematic — that is, they give just the 
one view of the truth or fact with which they are con- 
cerned at the time, leaving all other views of it to be 



120 THE PUEPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCEIPTUEE. 

given as occasion may arise. In one place the so- 
vereignty of God seems to be so stated as to obliterate 
human freedom ; in the other, human freedom, so as 
to obliterate the sovereignty of God. Grace and 
nature, love and law, faith and works, are all illus- 
trated, not as they would be in a doctrinal system, but 
as they come up, one by one, in the history of churches 
or of men. Hence, while each passage and part of 
Scripture is to be taken in its own meaning and appli- 
cation, without being stretched on a Procrustes-bed, 
and informed, with significances it never dreamt of, by 
the interpreter, all are to be taken together, one with 
another ; for they are the separate notes of one har- 
mony, and out of their seeming discord, to the hearing 
ear, the grand sweet music of eternal truth will come. 
Paul is imperfect without James, and Paul and James 
without John ; but bring the three lights together, and 
what a glory follows ! The interpretation of Scripture 
is often narrow, limited to particular points and views : 
Scripture itself is w T ide, consistent, all-inclusive, as the 
round world, or the heaven with its stars. 

But the unity of the Bible carries along with it, and 
implies, the progress of the Bible. The very fact that 
it is on one great plan produces seeming inconsis- 
tencies in its earlier and later portions — inconsis- 
tencies which are all of them explained by the pro- 
gressiveness of its teaching. The truth is one, and the 
life is one ; the earliest and the latest are fundamen- 
tally the same. But the revelation is gradual ; its 
periods, the instruments employed in it, the fulness 
of its outflowings, are on an ascending scale. 

Now, apply this principle of the unity and progress 
of the Bible to the question of the relation between 



THE PUKPOSE AND FOEM OF HOLY SCKIPTUEE. 121 



the Old Testament and the New, and it will help you 
to solve that question. The Old and New are one ; 
therefore, in the New must be continued on, everything 
in the Old which cannot be shewn to be, by the New 
itself, abrogated and made to cease, as belonging to a 
prophetic dispensation, and fulfilling a temporary use, 
But the New is an advance on the Old ; so that, while 
the same things are found in it, their horizon will be 
widened, and their breadth and depth of spiritual 
meaning will be increased. Familiar illustrations, of 
the cases to which this principle applies, will be found, 
for example, in the Paedo-baptist controversy, in the 
Decalogue controversy, in the public worship contro- 
versy, in the marriage law controversy. I cannot 
enter on these, and would only say, that most people 
who engage in them seem to me to have no principle 
in their minds at all, or to forget it whenever they 
find it convenient to do so ; cutting the tie between 
the New Testament and the Old when it suits them, 
or making it as strong as links of iron when it suits 
them to do the opposite. 

4 Another source of difficulty, of which this principle 
disposes, is, the peculiarity of the quotations by later 
writers of the sayings of earlier ones. These are 
always characterised by a singular freedom; they 
almost invariably quote the earlier words, in a deeper 
or shallower sense than that which they originally 
bore. The fact that the Bible is one book, with an 
unchanging Divine authorship, as well as changing 
human authorship, one and progressive, accounts for 
this. The later inspiration had a freedom in dealing 
with the earlier which one human writer could not 
have in dealing with another human writer, because 



122 THE PURPOSE AND FORM OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

the inspiring Spirit was one. And so Christ or Paul 
may quote some Old Testament saying in a limited and 
narrow application, unforeseen by the man who uttered 
it first ; or in a wide and deep application, unforeseen 
by him ; because his thought was also the Holy Spirit's 
thought, and the later sense was hidden in the earlier 
as germ, or ran beneath the earlier as an undertone. 
I know that this seems to ascribe to thought that was 
human a certain infinitude, but then it was also divine ; 
and the mystery of the relation between the finite and 
the infinite is not peculiar to the incarnation of Christ, 
or the inspiration of Scripture. Wherever we encoun- 
ter it, we must content ourselves with certain facts, 
and forbear to tempt the deeps of theory — forbear 
vainly trying 

" To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, 
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought." 

And, last of all, the unity and progress of the Bible 
solve that favourite objection, which is drawn from the 
morality of the earlier Scriptures. I have committed 
myself, in my earlier remarks, to hold it a fair objection, 
where the dictates of conscience are ascertained, and, for 
the morality enjoined or commended, Scripture makes 
itself responsible. But in each case — the case of the 
Avenger of Blood, for example— the case of the Song 
of Deborah, in which the assassination of Sisera by 
Jael is lauded as a heroic deed — the case of the sacri- 
fice of Isaac— a patient interpretation will solve the 
problem. The circumstances of the time are to be 
considered ; the typical relation of Israel to the heathen 
nations ; the fact that the revelation was growing up 
amidst a human weakness and darkness to which it 
wisely accommodated itself, not in the way of error, but 



THE PUKPOSE AND FOKM OF HOLY SCKIPTUKE. 123 

of imperfection, which are two very different things 
— imperfection, which did better work at the time 
than perfection would have done, and which, before the 
book was finished, was to be gathered up and lost in 
the light of the perfect day. And then, if difficulty 
still remain, I am not sure that all things which con- 
tradict a nineteenth-century sentimentalism, contra- 
dict the eternal morality. What seems strange enough 
on the misty, swampy level, may be clear and plain 
on the mountain-top. There is a good deal in the 
apology which the biographer of Oliver Cromwell 
makes for what was called the massacre of Tredah :— 
" Terrible surgery this ; but is it surgery and judg- 
ment, or atrocious murder merely ? That is a question 
which should be asked and answered. Oliver Crom- 
well did believe in God's judgments, and did not be- 
lieve in the rose-water plan of surgery — which, in 
fact, is this editor's case too!"* and the case of some 
other people. 

I have brought you a long way, but I think I have 
given you some reason to believe, that the difficulties 
of Scripture will disappear, before a fair, and thorough, 
and systematic interpretation. Calmly the Bible 
invites your scrutiny ; the Lord Jesus invites it in the 
Bible's name. And a true faith in the Bible, and 
true love for it, will echo the cry, " Search the 
Scriptures!" In their light we shall see light; 
amidst their reassuring voices we shall cease to fear. 
It is a secret unbelief which cleaves to old words and 
notions simply because they are old, and dreads 
inquiry and the letting in of the daylight at the 
window. We need not be cowards for the Bible, 
* Carlyle's Cromwell, II., p. 453. 



124 THE PURPOSE AND FORM OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

when it never dreams of being a coward for itself. 
The truth is ever life and peace, and the falsehood or 
suppression of the truth is inward misery and then 
death. 

I have no sympathy, however, with the pet modern 
plan, of giving up the letter of Scripture as involved 
in inextricable difficulties, and supposing that the 
spirit and the power will still remain * No ! the 
medium through which the heavenly light comes 
cannot be impure. Error or defect in the form any 
more than in the substance there cannot be. Take 
refuge, from the myriad objections which this position 
summons up, in diligent study of the Scriptures, or in 
patient waiting for the solution which God will send. 
And let us not forget that for the task of explaining 
and defending this holy Book there is supernatural aid, 
to be won by faith and prayer. The Holy Spirit that 
inspired the writer s meaning and his words, has his 
best interpreter in the Holy Spirit dwelling and shin- 
ing in the reader's heart. 

* " Some have tried to assail a book here and a chapter there ; in 
one place a few sentences, in others a mere phrase ; and they would 
persuade us that these may be allowed to fall away and perish, as 
withered leaves might drop from a tree which continues to 
flourish. It is a more true figure to say that the result would 
rather resemble the slow degrees by which life passes from the 
dying body : first the extremities are chilled under the grasp of 
death ; than the fatal numbness steals gradually onward, till it 
fastens on life's strong hold in the heart. Or we might liken it to 
the dying out of an illumination in a royal mansion ; first, there is 
darkness in some distant chamber ; then it steals along the 
corridors and halls ; one room after another vanishes from sight : 
one light after another is extinguished ; till the whole building 
rests in unbroken obscurity, when the last lamp of all has been 
withdrawn." — Hannah's Bampton Lectures, 249, 



PEAYEE AND NATTJEAL LAW. 

BY THE 

REV. JOHN DUNS, D.D., F.R.S.E., 

PROFESSOR OF NATURAL SCIENCE, NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH. 



The subject of this Lecture is held at present by many 
thoughtful men, to be one of great interest and im- 
portance. While I freely acknowledge its difficulty, 
I make no pretensions to impartiality in the discus- 
sion which follows, — if by impartiality be meant the 
freedom of the understanding from all bias of Christian 
sentiment and affection. The theme is too much in 
the line of some of the purest and deepest expe- 
riences of homely walk, and of personal work and 
trial for this. Besides, the heights of impartiality are 
far up where the snows lie. We dwell in the valley 
where the mists are said to be. Yet there the warmth 
is felt ; there the trees grow, and the flowers follow 
the sun, and the birds sing ; there homes for human 
hearts cluster ; and there even, in " God's light, we see 
light/' Without a figure, let me say in the outset, 
that the question is to be discussed from the point of 
view of belief in the personality of God as the " Hearer 
of Prayer," and of confidence in the efficacy of prayer. 
The subject is thus one which goes straight home to 
the very heart of our strength and hope. 

One or two topics which lie on the threshold must 
be glanced at, in order to a clear view of the state of 
the question, though they have not any very close and 
direct bearings on it. 



128 



PEAYEE AND NATUEAL LAW. 



I am not called here to deal with miracles. The illus- 
tration of the harmony of miraculous manifestations 
of the power of Jehovah with, so-called, evenly work- 
ing natural laws, is, from the view- point of natural 
science, a subject of deep interest, and presents a wide 
field to competent thinkers, especially when we asso- 
ciate the geologic history of the earth with that of the 
Adamic period. But even a brief and imperfect out- 
line of this ground would lead us far away from our 
present task. 

Again, most who have given some attention to this 
matter, must have noticed how much haze and un- 
certainty surround the views of many as to the rela- 
tion of God to the laws of nature. Not only is the 
meaning of the term " natural law " very imperfectly 
understood by them, if indeed it be understood at all, 
but language is used in speaking of God and nature, 
as if they were believed to be in some sense one. It 
is no doubt true, that several of the class now referred 
to, would count you guilty of a breach of charity, were 
you to set them down as holding such notions, though 
warranted by a fair and honest construction of their 
words. 

Now, let us inquire, for a moment, how the matter 
stands. Tew, if any, will refuse to acknowledge the 
presence of special adaptations in nature, — such fit- 
nesses between means and ends, structure and func - 
tion, as at least suggest to the observer the likelihood, 
that intelligent Personality exists above and behind 
them. Unless blinded by prejudice, we are forced to 
this by the well-known laws of our own minds. 
Take, for example, the breast fins of the fish, the 
wings of the bird, the fore-legs of the horse, and the 



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129 



arms of man ? These are not only formed on the 
same plan, but, under various and wide modifications, 
they contain the same bones. Or, take the foot of the 
pigeon, of the duck, and of the hawk, or even the 
teeth of the hare, of the dog, of the ox, and of the 
tiger, and associate the modifications of the structure 
of these organs with the functions which depend on 
them, and the habits of the various animals to which 
they belong ! Would you, in the full knowledge of 
these, not be ready to call that man by a hard name, 
who would persistently refuse to recognise adapta- 
tion in these ? And if adaptation, why not a per- 
sonal designer ? I am anxious to have your assent 
here, because it will give definiteness to our views 
when we come to discuss the special subject before us. 

Perhaps, a thoughtful review of the relation between 
the artist or the machinist, and his work, might shed 
some light on this topic, which has, one cannot well 
see why, come to be associated with the present ques- 
tion. Take, say, a picture and a reaping-machine. It 
is hardly possible, even to imagine that these could 
have been produced by unconscious and unintelligent 
workers. Nor can we easily mistake the varied evi- 
dences of the action of adaptive w T isdom and of a 
determining will, for the manifestations of mere blind 
force and unconscious, unthinking energy. Moreover, 
in both cases the product tells us much more than 
that the worker is intelligent. It says, most plainly 
and emphatically, that he is higher than his work ; 
that he was conscious of his intention in realizing it ; 
yea, even that the work had, in a sense, independent 
existence in his own mind before it was revealed to 
other minds, — before, as a picture, it w T as put on the 

I 



130 PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 

canvass in colours that never fade, or as a reaping i 
machine, it was realised in cunningly adapted modifi- i 
cations of wood and iron. This all implied personality. f 
The picture influences the onlooker. It appeals to j 
some of his most influential tastes — his love of beauty, i 
for example, his appreciation of symmetry and the i 
like. It introduces him to the thoughts, if not to the \ 
moral tastes, of the artist. Thus, then, as regards the ] 
mere act of fashioning, the analogy between God's 
work and man's holds good. Before he had realized j 
even the workable materials, and before that touch of 
the creative hand, interpretive of thought, was laid on ( 
them, he was aware of their fitness to enter into | 
certain combinations, for they were created thereto, ; 
and to assume certain forms, because these forms were 
from eternity in his own mind. Thus there was O^e, i 
even the Almighty, before the materials, who. knew 
what they were equal to, even as he was equal to the ; 
work of introducing them, when as yet they were not. 

But this was not, as has been foolishly alleged, an j 
interference with the divine personality, as if so 
much of this personality must have been transferred to 
nature, or merged in it, and thus have become part of 
the laws under which nature was put. This impres- 
sion influences many who would not care to own it, 
and has become the dead fly in the ointment of their 
higher beliefs. When man realizes his sense of 
beauty in the picture — when he gives material expres- 
sion and permanence to ideal wisdom, or strength, or 
trust — and when he exhibits his inventive skill in 
the complicated machine, is his personality thereby 
interfered with ? Or has he lost part of it in such 
acts ? On the contrary the ability belongs to man to 



PEAYEE AND NATUKAL LAW. 



131 



realise objects distinct from himself. It is absurd to 
merge the worker in the work. Mind and its mani- 
festations are no more one, than the steam engine 
and its speed are. Man, with materials for work, 
realizes in them intentions of which he was con- 
scious before they were brought out, and these, 
when thus realised, are distinct from his thoughts. 
They bear plain testimony to the presence and the 
action of will, but are not the same as the will. God 
provides even the materials, and thus shews His 
greatness. He is not, however, creation. He is the 
creator. The work is His. It is not He. It is other 
than himself. It is, as it were, outside of his person- 
ality. Now I do not see how we can avoid this 
inference. But having reached it, we see that the 
works of nature are not the same as the laws of 
nature, and the laws in turn, are not God. Neither 
are they the action of a transferred creative personality. 
In our prayers, then, we aim at the heart of him who 
is above nature, and whose freedom is no more 
bounded by the laws which he has impressed on it, 
than the artist's freedom is by the thought which he 
has embodied in his picture, or the machinist's by the 
personal skill which he has transferred to the machine. 

I have long thought that this whole question of 
the relation of God to the works of his hands, and 
to the laws which he has assigned to them, has been 
too much limited to the point of view of natural 
theism. In discussing it we have been far too anxious 
to escape from that suspicion of prejudice, which many 
hasten to entertain the moment you profess to be 
under the influence of Christian thought, Neverthe- 
less I think it can be made good, that the Christian 



132 PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



point of view is truer and more in harmony with the 
present demands of science than the theistic. 

No one, I imagine, would venture to assert that 
science has no higher aim than to minister to mere 
physical wants. It is not only to serve the body or 
to foster pride in vulgar material prosperity, that she 
sends her busy and untiring workers into the wide 
fields of nature. Like a true child she wishes to know 
the father's thoughts, that, knowing them, she may 
reveal them to others besides her own children, in 
order to influence their spiritual nature. Yet when 
science has told all that she can tell, much still re- 
mains to be known, because man's spiritual nature has 
a side which needs to be influenced from above, from 
heaven rather than from the earth. Now T , I can make 
comparatively little of the external world, of its 
phenomena and its laws, until I have learned to 
associate it with an active Power over it, and a 
working "Will above it. In a word, with a person 
whose power and will are associated by me with 
truth and love, and whose manifestations are seen by 
me to be ever in behalf of truth, and to embrace 
rational objects of love. But let me bring the exter- 
nal world into relation with the highest wants of my 
soul, as personally loving a love-worthy One, whom 
I have discovered to be both Creator and Eedeemer, 
then how full of meaning, how rich in motives to 
worship, how suggestive of motives to work every thing 
comes to be ! This is put with great force and beauty 
by one of the foremost thinkers that the world ever 
saw : " The head," he says, " of every man is Christ/' 
Brought to Him by faith and love, and made com- 
plete in Him, we see Him as " head of all principality 



PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



133 



and power," for " by him were all things created that 
are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and in- 
visible/' " all things were created by him and for him." 
Then comes an announcement of the grandest kind, 
" God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his 
Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by 
whom also he made the worlds." 

This is, in every sense, the highest, yea, shall I not 
say, the most impartial point of view. The merely 
theistic one is not for a moment to be compared with 
it. The theist speaks of a God who may be love- 
worthy, but there is nothing in nature either to reveal 
this clearly, or to turn the heart to Him. The 
Christian associates essential and veritable Godhead 
with one as Creator, whom he has learned to love, to 
revere, and to serve as Eedeemer. So called pure 
theism — the natural idea of an almighty one, an 
eternal and absolute God, dwelling in the depths of 
being, far off, remote, shadowy — is enough to make 
one tremble under a feeling of utter loneliness in the 
cold night of the world. But the dark disappears, 
and the sun breaks through, bringing warmth and 
revealing beauty, when I know that He who created 
all things, is the same who has become to me a Saviour, 
a Companion, a Friend. The same voice now speaks 
to me in the constant working of the laws of nature, 
as in the moral precepts of the written Word. The 
World and the Word are only parts of that one great 
revelation of Himself which He has made to me. 
Nature is no longer regarded as cast out. Matter is 
no more associated by me with what is essentially 
evil. He who guides all nature's laws is the same 



134 PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



one who, as my Kedeemer, High Priest, and everlast- 
ing Father, hears prayer. 

Tt has ever been a source both of perplexity and 
weakness, to those who have tried to think on these 
things, and who have sought to have all made plain 
to them, to have cherished an impression that, some- 
how or other, He who holds the forces of the external 
world is not the same whom, mayhap from childhood, 
we learned to love, or, in riper years, to trust intelli- 
gently as a covenant God. Indeed, to this is to be 
traced the attempt to make good a case in behalf of 
prayer for spiritual blessings, while its place and 
proper efficacy are denied in regard to temporal 
mercies. But this is vain. He who is believed to 
hear prayer created all things, and He by whom we 
are redeemed disposes of all events. He it is whose 
controlling power we call providence. Spiritual bles- 
sings and temporal mercies are equally in His hands. 
He who reigns in Grace rules in Nature. 

But to come closer to our subject : The doubt and 
hesitancy on this question, which have recently been 
fully expressed, are not new. The same views have 
frequently been discussed before, though, perhaps, 
under different forms. One of the most striking 
features of error is that it never dies. It changes its 
face to the times, but it never gives up the struggle 
against truth. It suits itself to the culture and the 
social advancement of the age, and tries to use these 
against Him to whom we are indebted for all true 
progress in knowledge, as well as for all true moral 
health. 

The point at which the difficulty as to the relation 
of prayer to natural law takes its rise should be 



PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



135 



clearly seen and understood. It is held to have been 
first broadly stated by scientific workers, because, 
it is said, they had been forced thereto by the facts of 
science. They had seen evidences of forces working 
evenly and without a mistake, like the stars in their 
courses, " unhasting, yet unresting/' The experience 
and observation of all the workers who have ever lived, 
it is alleged, have been in the same direction. There 
have been no interruptions in the grandeur of the 
action and course of law, at least, since the beginning 
of the present epoch. Yea, when geologic time has 
been taken into account, they have found that through- 
out millions, not of years, but of ages, the stars had 
shivered in cold wintry skies, the moon had walked 
in her brightness, and the sun had shone forth in his 
strength. There had been sea, and land, and atmo- 
sphere ; rain and wind, summer and winter, cold and 
heat. And the question has arisen — " May there not 
have been creation by law?" At least, is it not clear 
that law reigns ? But there are two records, or rather 
two parts of one record. Thus far the testimony of the 
one — the World. What says the other — the Word? "In 
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. *' 
Thus, according to the Bible, we have the Creator's 
testimony to His own work. He has spoken to man, 
and made known a fact, which all true science 
acknowledges to be beyond its scope — the fact, 
namely, of the origin of all things. This discovery 
became the foundation of all the revelation later made 
to man. The earth owed its origin to the direct 
forth-putting of creative power, and it has been in the 
great grasp of that power ever since. Thus the views 
of Scripture as to God's relation to the earth. In its 



136 



PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



present condition it was prepared for man, and man 
is now under the special charge, care, holy guard and 
keeping of his great Creator. He has so guided 
circumstances, He has so controlled events, even from 
the beginning, as to make them serve to discipline 
man— to provoke him to action, to break in on his 
natural slothfulness, to give strength to his will, to 
give depth to his love, and to hold out to his hopes 
objects which, though known on earth, are never to 
be fully enjoyed until we are called to leave it. JSTow, 
in this divine ministration, the same God, we are 
assured by the Bible, has used the sun in the heavens, 
the stars of the sky, the waves of ocean, the course of 
mighty rivers, the rolling thunder, the forked flashing 
lightning, the noisome'pestilence, the deadly plague, the 
hail, the blight, the beasts of the field, the birds of the 
air, the fishes of the sea, and even the tiny insect 
itself, in ways which, while they might at the time 
harmonize with the laws under which they were all 
originally put, yet gave to those influenced by them, 
the well grounded persuasion, that they were all 
under direct sovereign control, and, as such, had been 
specially used for their sake. Can they then resist 
the impression that not law, but the Lord, reigns? 
Thus the issue. It is one of great moment. Science 
claims for her sons all sympathy and credit, when they 
tell to the world the wonders of Natural Law. Good ; 
biit why refuse the same to the simple-minded, 
earnest student of the Word, and of providence 
regarded in the light of the Word ? Charity is not 
one-sided. If the reader of the Word of Life can 
point to the record of innumerable evidences of direct 
interference and constant control, why not acknowledge 



PRAYEK AND NATUKAL LAW. 



137 



his sincerity when he appeals to these, and asks, as 
one profoundly convinced of the fact, " Does not the 
Lord reign ?" 

But, perhaps, science has been made responsible for 
more than should have been attributed to her. It is 
doubtful if she has been so forward in putting the 
question of unbelief as has been alleged. The fact is, 
it has, for the most part, been put by men who are 
in a great measure destitute of true scientific attain- 
ments — men who have had no experience of the great 
yet pleasant toil and weariness in work which is the 
lot of all who are fairly and honestly entitled to put 
these questions. These men, who seize on the disco- 
veries and findings of science, in order to twist them 
to their own purposes, have done no more than stand 
at the mouth of the mine, and steal the silver as it 
was brought up out of the dark into the light of the 
revealing sun. They have never gone down into the 
dark, never left their cushioned chairs or warm places 
of ease by the fireside, in order to reach the under- 
standing of very difficult subjects, on the outside of 
which, forsooth, they jauntily hang the new-fashioned 
garments of old, very old, unbeliefs. 

Now, what at the present time is wanted, is the 
exercise of a spirit which will calmly look at both 
sides, and will candidly inquire, if there be not good 
standing-ground for all in search of truth, even in 
the face of the full acknowledgment of both classes 
of phenomena. I believe there is, but it is difficult to 
reach, not so much because of its height or its dis- 
tance, as because of the mental quality which must 
distinguish all who would seek to stand on it. " The 
kingdom of men found in science/' says Bacon, " is like 



138 



PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



the kingdom of God. It can be entered only in the 
character of little children/' As far as this qualifica- 
tion goes, it is, then, demanded equally from the true 
student of the Word and from the painstaking ob- 
server of Nature. The Scripture record contains the 
account of many interferences with nature which we 
can bring under no law. What, for example, can we 
make of the passage of the Eed Sea by the hosts of 
Israel as they marched away from the land of their 
bondage ? We believe it actually took place, and are 
humbled before God as we confess our ignorance of 
the mode in which it was accomplished, and of the 
conditions which the waters assumed, in direct oppo- 
sition to one of the best known laws under which 
water has been put. We cannot explain how this was. 
We attempt an explanation on mere natural principles, 
and feel ourselves baffled at every point. Where or in 
what shall we find rest ? In nothing save in the ac- 
knowledgment of the action of a Divine Will and 
Almighty Person, as One able to control the law ori- 
ginally impressed by Himself on fluids. How it was, 
we know not ; that it was, we know and believe. 
Conscious ignorance sets us apart as little children. 

Such, too, will be the experience of the sincere 
worker in the rich, wide field of science. Take the 
history of the earth ? Has its march really been as 
steady as some theorists would have us to believe ? 
Is it not rather the case, that the world has been built 
up after a fashion not of the most regular kind, and 
in a very unequal way ? There is proof that, at one 
time and another, creative energy suddenly, yea, 
almost violently, broke forth after long periods of 
rest. Whole worlds of life have once and again been 



PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



139 



destroyed. New species have been introduced, and a 
most complicated new series of physical conditions 
been realised in consequence. Yet, in connection 
with some of these changes, forethought of a most 
remarkable kind had been working, as, for example, 
in preparing coal, great ages before man, who was to 
use it, appeared on the earth, and, in subjecting it to 
conditions in order to mineralisation, which demanded 
the lapse of vast periods before it could be as useful 
as it now is. Where, too, we might ask, are the 
graptolites of those old Silurian seas, which rolled 
over the areas now held by some of the richest of the 
southern counties of Scotland? Where the ganoid 
fishes of that " Old Bed," in which Hugh Miller, one 
of Scotland's noblest sons, worked to such purpose ? 
Where the shore swamps and the luxuriant vegeta- 
tion, which, long ages before the sun looked down on 
Eden, prepared for us the coal in the basins of the 
Forth and the Clyde ? A thousand such questions 
might be put. 

There have, then, been breaks in the succession of 
the great ages. But how shall the student of science 
account for these ? How, but in the sovereign action 
and control of creative will and forethought ! True, 
on the very threshold he is met by much which he 
cannot explain. Shall he doubt on this account ? 
To doubt is to lose blessing, for he has been brought 
face to face with these things, in order that he too 
might feel his ignorance, and become as a little child. 

The state of the question thus gradually becomes 
clearer as we proceed. And now we may ask, what 
is " Natural Law/' what is " Prayer,'' and on what 
hypothesis can we explain the harmony between the 



140 



PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



action of the former, and the profitable exercise of the 
latter ? 

Any property natural to, and inherent in matter, 
whether organic or inorganic, is held to be a law of 
matter. Natural Law is thus the stamp of God's will 
on creation, and the action of law is simply the mani- 
festation of this. A law is not a cause but a condi- 
tion of matter — of substance. As, however, nothing 
in nature stands alone, the action of any one law 
implies the existence of a highly complicated series 
of inter-actions, in spheres sometimes closely related, 
but often far removed from its own. These relations 
are chiefly in view when the term " Natural Law" is 
used. Law might thus be said to be, the constant 
working of creative will. In the words of Oersted, 
" the laws of nature are the thoughts of God." 

It is the business of science to bring facts together 
by a process of induction, and by another of deduction 
to determine the laws under which these facts are. 
For example, the periods in which the Earth and Mars 
revolve round the sun are to each other as 3,652,564 
is to 6,879, 796. Respectively they are distant from 
the sun as 100,000 to 152,369. Now, if you multiply 
each of the first two numbers by itself, and each of 
the last two by itself twice, it will be found that the 
proportion of the first two results is exactly the same 
to each other as is that of the last two. This was 
Kepler's discovery, and it is known in science as his 
third law. Its mathematical expression is,— "the 
squares of the periodic times of any two planets 
are to each other in the same proportion as the cubes 
of their mean distances from the sun.'' The delicate 
adjustment here must strike you all, and you might 



PEAYEE AND NATUEAL LAW. 



141 



be ready to affirm, that when once fixed it must have 
been unalterably so. I purposely take an extreme 
illustration. But what is this law? Is it not simply 
the stamp of creative will, and, if so, is it not conceiv- 
able, that he to whom its action in all time was 
known, and in the eye of whose purpose its innu- 
merable relations were all spread out, could, when he 
determined it, have made a provision for its modi- 
fied action, at one moment in a thousand, or if you 
will, in a million of years, as an answer to a cry like 
that which rung up to heaven from the valley of Gibeon 
— " Sun, stand thou still/' You must either grant 
the possibility of this or deny the omniscience of God. 

Thus far as to law. We ask now " What is prayer?" 
And here let there be no mistake. Prayer is an act 
in which two persons — God and man — have a part. 
It is not simply the cry of a sorrowful soul, or of an 
anxious mind, or of a broken heart ; but it is that cry 
reaching the ear and entering the heart of God him- 
self. Man cries, and God hears. Man asks, and 
God gives. Man prays, and God answers. Prayer is 
a chain, one end of which we believe reaches the 
bosom of the Father ; the other end is in our own 
bosom. There are, no doubt, intermediate links which 
we do not see ; but it would even be unphilosophical to 
plead here defect of knowledge and the limits of man's 
thought, as a reason or an excuse for not believing. 
See where this would land you. You pluck a red 
rose from one bush, and a white one from another 
near it ; but do you withhold your belief of the white- 
ness in the one case and the redness in the other till 
you can explain the cause of the difference ? There 
are even more mysteries in matter than in morals ; 



142 



PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



arid why make mystery an excuse for unbelief in the 
latter, while you refuse to let it influence you in the 
former ? 

Having seen what the external world says of natural 



prayer. 1. God hears prayer : — "He forgetteth not 
the cry of the humble" (Ps. ix. 12). " This poor man 
cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of 
all his troubles" (Ps. xxiv. 6). " Call on me, and I 
will answer thee" (Jer. xxiii. 3). "Every one that 
asketh receiveth" (Mat. vii. 8). 2. It is associated 
with the foreknowledge of God : — " Thy Father knoweth 
what things ye have need of before ye ask him" 
(Mat. vi. 8). 3. The answer is often made to depend 
on the spiritual condition of the suppliant : — " If I 
regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear 
me" (Ps. lxvi. 18). "Ye ask, and receive not, because 
ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts" 
(James iv. 3). 4. It is not limited to spiritual bless- 
ings : — " Abraham prayed unto God, and he healed 
Abimelech" (Gen. xx. 17). " Ask of the Lord rain in 
the time of the latter rain ; so the Lord shall make 
bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, to every 
one grass in the field" (Zech. x. 1). " When ye pray, 
say, Give us day by day our daily bread" (Luke 
xi. 3). 5. It was Christ's habit : — " Who in the 
days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and 
supplications with strong crying and tears unto him 
that was able to save him from death, and was heard 
in that he feared" (Heb. v. 7). Such passages might 
be multiplied. The design in every one jsto create in 
us the belief that God is influenced by our prayers. 
I am fully alive to the strangeness, if not mystery, 



law, let us now inguirewhat 




>rd says of 



PRAYEE AND NATURAL LAW. 



143 



implied in such a view as this, so soon as it is stated ; 
but certainly the words of Scripture warrant it. Thus 
such expressions as the following occur in the Word 
of God : — " It repenteth me that I have set up Saul 
to be king " He is slow to anger, and repenteth him 
of the evil " Let it repent thee concerning thy ser- 
vants " How shall I give thee up, Ephraim, &c. ?" 
f Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are 
kindled together." 

Now there may be impenetrable mystery to me in 
all this, but of one thing I am sure — there is no 
mockery of my wants, and wishes, and longings. 
Yea, there is far more here than the mere speaking 
after the manner of men. There is something like 
feelings and affections, and sympathies akin to our 
own, and I am not to lose the sweet satisfaction which 
this is fitted to bring me, merely because I cannot 
explain it all to myself or to others. But parallel with 
this statement we must set the distinct and unmis- 
takeable acknowledgment of the eternity and immu- 
tability of God, and willingly leave the solution of this 
difficulty with Himself, as indeed we must leave many 
more difficulties, even in regard to very common 
matters. In time He may open to me the mystery, 
and shew the divine simplicity in the very point of 
harmony. Meanwhile, we are convinced that the 
antagonism here is apparent only, not real. My 
prayers are like the one side of the arch, and the un- 
changing character of God like the other ; but both 
meet in the keystone — in this case the sovereign will 
of God himself. 

But while this is so, let it not be thought that we 
refuse to look the difficulty full in the face. It is 



144 



PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



felt. It is unreservedly acknowledged, but it is not 
believed to be a stumbling-block to any soul. Look- 
ing at it fully and candidly, there are two hypotheses, 
according to either of which, it seems to me, we may 
make good the harmony between the action of natural 
law, and the answer to prayer. One of these I asso- 
ciate with the limited knowledge of man ; the other 
with the will of God In either case, however, we 
must assume the doctrine of the omniscience of God, 
the hearer of prayer. There is no ground on which 
to argue the question if this be refused, but granting 
this, which indeed is common to Theism and Chris- 
tianity, the ground is clear and firm. 

I. Suppose, then, that we, readily and without 
reserve, acknowledge all that our objector could 
affirm as to the unchanging character of the action of 
natural law, and that we accept without questioning 
every alleged fact referred to, as illustrative of this ! 
How far in doing so have we gone away from the 
belief common to all true Christians, that God hears 
prayer, even for those temporal blessings which come 
to us in the line of the constant working of these 
same laws ? Not one step. We have done no more 
than characterise their action, as far as the aspects go 
which meet our eyes. Temporal blessings are associ- 
ated in our minds with a system of natural causation 
named providence. Spiritual blessings become ours 
in the administration of a kingdom whose forces are 
everywhere intertwined with those of providence in 
such a close, intimate, and complicated way, that in 
very few cases are we able to draw a broad line of 
distinction between the two. But, in full view of this 



PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



145 



we are in the habit of believing that all answers to 
prayer come to us, not supernaturally, but in the 
course of ordinary causation. How is this ? Simply 
because we feel that the Creator is above creation, the 
controller of events greater than these, and the All- 
Wise equal to the management of ever working laws, 
so that their action shall harmonise with his purpose, 
and the fruit of all shall seem to the one most deeply 
interested, to be the direct interference of sovereign 
will, and in no sense the manifestation of mere 
natural causation. Schiller puts this thought finely, 

" The world's great architect, 
****** 
Grandly he sits behind vicegerent laws, 
He the great master workman." 

The points at which we meet with God may be 
regarded as in the circumference of a well defined 
circle, but there may be many other circles lying 
within this, which, if seen as clearly by us as the 
outer one, might shew us God's method of using the 
forces of that outer circle in answering prayer, with- 
out altering those aspects in which they are chiefly 
regarded by man. But is it worthy of man ? Is it 
even in the spirit of a true philosophy to limit God 
to our view of natural forces, and to reason as if those 
which we see are the only ones in exercise, or, if 
there be others, as if it were impossible they could 
act on these, without altering the features which we 
have been accustomed to regard ? These features, we 
believe, are of the utmost consequence to us in our 
daily life. Tea, we have regarded them as ordained, 
in order to the growth and preservation of our bodies, 

K 



146 



PEAYEE AND NATUEAL LAW. 



and to the education of our spiritual nature. But 
it is said, if we are daily to see them altering in 
those features which we had believed to be permanent, 
and because permanent, of the greatest value, where 
would be our walk in confidence ? Where our calm 
trust that to-morrow shall be as to-day ? Would 
not all be doubt, uncertainty, hesitancy? This is 
indeed the point of deepest interest. But according 
to the hypothesis now under notice, no such evidences 
of interference are to be seen, and yet God may so 
hold in his hand — so guide — forces which lie behind 
those which we observe, as to make what we see fulfil 
our desires, work out our wishes, in a word, answer 
our prayers. The trial of our faith will at this point 
simply consist in this, that we do not understand how 
this can be. No great trial, I presume ! 

Take an illustration. A friend leaves a healthy 
home to visit one of those crowded closes in a large 
city, from which the sweet light of heaven and the air 
which is loaded with health are shut out, with the 
view of helping some working man's household to 
fight that battle, sore and difficult yet very noble, to 
which so many in crowded cities are called. As he 
enters ' the stair/ he is told that typhus and death 
are in the dwelling. Shall he proceed ? Yes ! May 
not his words strengthen a father to bear his burden ? 
May they not reach a mother's heart, and direct her 
to Jesus as the One who comforteth ? He enters, and 
afterwards returns home with poison in his blood 
enough to kill three men. Typhus strikes him. Laid 
on his bed the doctor says there is no hope. But a 
wife, a sister, a mother, or Christian friend, believing 
in the efficacy of prayer, cries unto God for him. 



PEAYEE AND NATUEAL LAW. 



147 



The burning fever relaxes its terrible grasp. Death, 
as if plagued by prayer, draws reluctantly back. He 
recovers ; believing, as those who prayed believe, that 
recovery came in answer to prayer. But the child, by 
whose bedside he had pleaded with God, and for 
whom the parents had pleaded, recovers also, as all 
believe, in answer to prayer. Now, I do not ask, 
merely, if the benefit to each is to be lost, that comes 
in the persuasion that, true or not, prayer has been 
answered. But, I do ask you to notice three facts 
here. (1.) That we are right in tracing the fever to 
the neglect of well-known natural laws. (2.) That 
while those to whose neglect this might be traced 
suffered ; another, who was not to blame, suffered 
likewise. (3.) That, contrary to man's hope, one in 
the house, where death had been, recovered and our 
friend against hope got better also. In the latter case 
we are not entitled to trace the recovery to the influ- 
ence of good air, a comfortable dwelling, and devoted 
medical skill, because in the former case all this was 
awanting, and yet there was recovery. Yet we see 
no miracle. All was in a very natural way. But is 
there one who will venture to characterise the belief 
in the efficacy of prayer in these cases as silly super- 
stition, and deny to God the power to answer the cry 
of his children, by the forth-putting of influences 
which lie beyond the view of the physician and the 
friend, but which yet interfere not with those natural 
sequences which all behold? Yea, which not only 
never clash, but act in divine harmony with the laws, 
which it is the physician s work to keep in healthy 
action — to guide, and even to modify in order to cure 
the disease- stricken bodies of men. 



148 



PEAYEE AND NATUEAL LAW. 



II. I find the alternative hypothesis in the will of 
God. Though well aware of the strong prejudice 
which exists against this, on the part of some men of 
culture, who allege they cannot rest in anything which 
they are not able to think out, I am, nevertheless, 
persuaded that it is the most satisfactory foundation 
on which to build our belief of the prevailing power 
of prayer. It is, moreover, the point of view of Chris- 
tianity — meaning by that word Christ's life in the 
individual man, as One in him, the true substitute 
and surety, and as abiding in him the eternal life. 
" If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye 
shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." 
By this abiding, and in it, the will of man is brought 
into harmony with his heavenly Father's will. Thus 
prayer comes to be no more than the prompting of 
the Spirit of the Father in us to ask what, when w r e 
ask aright, it is the Father's will and wish to give 
This promise, then, whose fulfilling is conditional to 
our having Christ's words abiding in us, reaches to 
all times, looks with a face of love on all his people, 
and is the constant encouragement for the poor and 
needy, the sick and sorrowful, yea, even for those 
gladdest in him as assuredly saved, to ask, to seek, 
to knock, to cry, to pray. 

I wish to put this as broadly and clearly as I can, 
because it seems to me to lie at the very root of the 
difficulty. And, in putting it thus, I may freely chal- 
lenge the statement of even one fact in science in con- 
tradiction of what I believe to be a great truth, namely, 
that, even in nature, phenomena are impenetrable if 
you do not associate them with constantly working 
divine will, and this none the less that we hasten to 



PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 



149 



name this working the manifestation of natural cau- 
sation. We may, indeed, lose sight of the personal 
will as underlying phenomena, in the very use of 
this word. Nevertheless all true science bears most 
emphatic testimony to the fact, that creative thought 
is before and above creation, that personality is more 
than principle, and that the action of will is above 
mere law. This subject might be set amidst rich 
illustration, drawn from recent discoveries in natural 
science, but to do more than name it would lead us 
away from our present task. 

The direct action of creative Will in nature and of 
sovereign Will in grace, both of which are suggested 
by this subject, opens a very wide field for thoughtful 
inquiry. The doctrine has, however, met with much 
opposition from thinkers at one time and another. 
In our own country this has especially been the case. 
It was a stumbling block in poor David Hume's way. 
Even to the gentle, loving, tender-hearted, and sweetly 
poetic Thomas Brown, it was foolishness. To George 
Combe it seemed almost hideous. I unwillingly 
name Brown in this connection, but it is done with 
the intent of indicating how much use is at present 
made of his views without acknowledgment. " It is 
quite evident/' he says, "that even omnipotence, 
which cannot do what is contradictory, cannot com- 
bine both advantages : the advantage of regular order 
in the sequence of nature, and the advantages of a 
uniform adaptation of the particular circumstances of 
the individual. We may take our choice, but we 
cannot think of a combination of both ; and if, as is 
very obvious, the greater advantage be that of 



150 



PEAYEE AND NATUEAL LAW. 



uniformity of operation, we must not complain of the 
evils to which that very uniformity, which we cannot 
fail to prefer (if the option had been allowed us), has 
been the very circumstance that gave rise.'' Combe 
has taken these thoughts out of that setting of warm 
sentiment and fine feeling, which almost softens our 
view of them when we read them in Brown s lectures, 
and has set them in ice. " Science/' he says, " has 
banished from the minds of profound thinkers belief 
in the exercise by the Deity, in our day, of special acts 
of supernatural power, as a means of influencing 
human affairs ; and it has presented a systematic 
order of nature, which man may study, comprehend, 
and follow as a guide to his practical conduct. Many 
educated laymen, and also a number of the clergy, 
have declined to recognize fasts, humiliations, and 
prayers, as means adapted, according to their views, 
to avert the recurrence of the evil. Indeed, these 
^observances, inasmuch as they mislead the public 
mind with respect to its causes, are regarded by such 
persons as positive evils." 

The evil referred to here, was the potato disease or 
blight, and now we have the very same words used in 
regard to the rinderprest, by men who might at least 
have had the honesty and heart to say with that son 
of the prophet who lost the axe head in the Jordan, — 
" Alas, sir, for it was borrowed." 

But views of this kind proceed on the baseless 
assumption that, " Providence " is no more than the 
expression of undeviating laws — the subordination of 
the great first cause to secondary causes, stamped on 
nature, or acquired by nature, and now universal and 



PEAYEE AND NATUEAL LAW. 



151 



uncnangeable, if, indeed, they are not eternal. Thus, 
to acknowledge the working of divine sovereign will 
seems, to such thinkers, to necessitate arbitrary action, 
spasmodic influences, wilful interferences, so as to 
destroy what is now held to be permanent, undeviat- 
ing, unchanging. 

I at once acknowledge a difficulty here. But then 
the difficulty is not all on my side. I can point to 
interferences with nature, say in the geologic history 
of the earth, and in the destruction and introduction 
of species, as formidable to an opponent's argument 
as any that can be advanced against mine. We are 
on a level then as to this. But my position is stronger 
than his. I believe that God is infinite, eternal, and 
unchangeable ; yet I believe, too, that this is not 
inconsistent with his power to hear prayer. There is 
no doubt much which I cannot' explain ; but choose 
your ground, in matter or in mind, and I am ready to 
point out a hundred things which you cannot explain 
either. You are troubled, yet I have rest. Intellect- 
ually, I see an hypothesis which satisfies me. 
Experimentally, I am yet more at ease as to this 
whole matter. Yea, my belief in the omniscience and 
eternal forethought of Jehovah, leads me to enjoy the 
privilege of prayer, and to leave all the difficulties 
with Him, who, to win me to trust Him, has not 
spared even His own dear Son — " When we were yet 
enemies, Christ died for us." And now in conclusion 
allow me to say, that I know not any sure standing 
ground in the midst of present spiritual disquietude 
and intellectual unrest, except this foundation laid 
in Zion ; and no refuge from the dangers of unbelief, 
but in Christ Himself ; and no true and abiding sense 



J 52 PEAYEE AND NATUEAL LAW. 

of safety in the heart of sore trials, but that which 
comes to child and old man, to young man and 
maiden, to rich and poor, to learned and unlearned 
alike, in the simple belief that God has sent His Son 
to save sinners. 



THE SABBATH: 

BY 

EOBEET S. CANDLISH, D.D., 

PRINCIPAL OF THE NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH. 



\ 



: 



VI— %\t SaMmfjr. 



I think it right to say at the outset, that I had agreed 
to take part in this series of lectures, and had selected 
my subject, and that both of these facts had been 
publicly advertised, before the speech was delivered 
in the Presbytery of the Established Church at Glas- 
gow which has occasioned so much discussion. I will 
frankly add that, in the view of that speech and that 
discussion, had I foreseen them, I would have avoided 
the topic, and that I now regret my having to deal 
with it in the circumstances which have emerged. Of 
course, I need scarcely explain that this feeling does 
not arise out of any difficulty or unwillingness on my 
part as regards the statement of my own views. But 
I have a deep conviction that the controversy has now 
come into such a position as to demand something 
more elaborate than a sermon or lecture, an address 
or pamphlet can supply. It is not, certainly, that 
either the speech or its defences and apologies display 
much fresh learning or fresh thought. The Bampton 
lectures of Dr Hessey (1860), with Cox's valuable 
though one-sided digest, furnish well nigh all their 
erudition. But the question is raised in a form in- 
volving large and wide issues, not only as to the 



156 



THE SABBATH. 



Sabbath, but as to the entire plan of Divine provi- 
dence, from the creation to the consummation of all 
things. The view to be taken of that plan, and of its 
consistent and harmonious development through all 
the Divine dispensations, is very closely bound up 
with the argument about the Sabbath, especially as 
now raised. This may not be matter of regret ; I do 
not think that it is so. But it makes it difficult to do 
justice to the subject in such a paper as I now read, 
prepared amid the hurry of other avocations. And it 
surely imposes upon our men of leisure and learning 
the obligation of a thorough scholarly and scriptural 
treatment of the whole case. 

I have another preliminary observation to make. I 
doubt if I can bring my subject, or my manner of 
treating it, fairly and legitimately under the general 
heading of this short course of lectures. This doubt 
has grown upon me since I began to gather materials, 
especially of the most recent sort. 

For in truth, so far as I can see, modern thought 
has done little or nothing either in the way of chang- 
ing or modifying the state of the question as regards 
the Sabbath itself, or in the way of altering, or at all 
affecting, its relation to the gospel system as a whole, 
or to any of its practical details. 

Let it be kept in mind that the discussion of the 
Sabbath question — by which I mean the question or 
controversy about the origin, perpetuity, and universal 
obligation of the Sabbatic institution — dates from a 
comparatively late period in the Church's history. It 
began in England with the rise of Puritanism, or of 
the protest against High Churchism, in the days of 
Elizabeth and James the First. I cannot better de- 



THE SABBATH. 



157 



scribe its origin than in the words of Dr Hessey. Ad- 
mitting the " low tone of feeling on the subject of the 
Holy Day" which then practically prevailed, he adds 
this statement : " Meanwhile, the state of theology in 
reference to it was equally unsatisfactory. The chief 
writers against the prevalent desecration of Sunday 
were not found among persons who represented the 
moderate and reserved views which I suppose the 
Church to have advisedly entertained. A new sect 
had sprung up, whose members were called sometimes 
Precisians, sometimes Disciplinarians, but more gene- 
rally Puritans. They were shocked at the forgetful- 
ness of God which manifested itself at all times, and 
on the Lord's own day especially. The government, 
political, social, and ecclesiastical, under which it 
existed, must evidently be unsound. "Was there any 
remedy for it ? They took the Bible into their hands, 
and decided that in it they woidd find a model of the 
true polity. And in particular they decided that in it 
they would find a model for God's worship superior 
to anything visible, and yet applicable to the present 
hour/'* Thus far Dr Hessey. He goes on to allow 
that though " perhaps there was not exactly what they 
wanted" in the Bible, "there was something like it." 
I make nothing of that allowance. But 1 hold him to 
have fairly put the issue raised at that crisis, and 
raised then for the first time, between those " who re- 
presented the moderate and reserved view which the 
Church," as he supposes, " had advisedly entertained," 
and those who " took the Bible into their hands, and 
decided that in it," as regards this and other matters, 
" they would find a model of the true polity/' 

* Bampton Lectures, p. 271. 



158 



THE SABBATH. 



It is here and thus that, properly speaking, Cm 
literature of the Sabbath question begins ; for it is 
here and thus that the Sabbath question itself comes 
up. All that had been previously written on the sub- 
ject, by the fathers, the mediaeval divines and school- 
men, and the reformers, was simply incidental ; occur- 
ring, I mean, in the course of argument on other 
topics, or of general scriptural exposition. The pre- 
cise point now in debate — the substantial identity of 
the Sabbatic institution from the creation to the end 
of time — was never formally handled as a matter of 
special inquiry and controversy. 

I am aware that some will be disposed to regard 
this as the very reason why we should fall back upon 
the notices, more or less explicit, in the earlier works 
of the divines who wrote before the dust and din of 
wordy strife confused and confounded the Sabbatic, 
atmosphere. Fain would I do so. For I believe, and 
I might show some ground for my belief, that these 
good and godly men were, in the main, practically, 
almost as Sabbatarian, as good observers of the Lord's 
day, as I am myself or would have any one else to be. 
But, at the same time, I protest against the notion 
that truth, on any debateable topic, is better ascertained 
by looking to those utterances about it which have 
preceded the thorough controversial discussion of 
it, than by the study of the discussion itself and of its 
results. And therefore, very specially, as regards this 
Sabbath question, I object to the mass of references 
and quotations from writers prior to the real rise of 
the contest being held to form part of the literature of 
the Sabbath question. They may furnish the mate- 



THE SABBATH. 



159 



rials, so far, of its discussion, but they are not them- 
selves, properly speaking, any part of its literature. 

This may seem a merely formal or verbal criticism, 
a quibble or cavil. I do not think that it is so. And 
at all events, I have another remark to make of a 
much more serious nature, as to the use made of these 
old authorities, particularly in our own day. 

It has been painfully forced upon my mind that 
there is a very marked contrast between the way in 
which the opponents of our views on the Sabbath 
question deal with the Fathers and the Eeformers, and 
the way in which the supporters of our views deal 
with them. That I may not be accused of vague 
allusion, I name Dr Hessey and Mr Cox on the one 
hand, and Dr Fairbairn and Mr Gilfillan on the other. 
I find the former eagerly seizing upon any sayings of 
these great men that seem to favour their views, and 
making no account whatever of qualifications or state- 
ments of an opposite tendency. The latter also I find 
bringing forward passages from the writings of the 
same men, giving plain and strong countenance to 
our doctrine of the Sabbath. But there is this 
difference. Fairbairn and Gilfillan do not ignore or 
pass by the apparently antagonistic utterances that 
are exclusively dwelt on by Hessey and Cox. They 
bring them forward, and deal with them, and profess to 
account for them, as I may by and by try partly to 
show. Meanwhile, it is not surely difficult to deter- 
mine which of these two courses indicates the greater 
learning or the greater fairness. 

But I gladly avail myself of Dr Hessey's mode of 
putting the alternative as to the state of the question, 
as it stood when it was for the first time fairly raised. 



160 



THE SABBATH. 



It is always important, in judging of any controversy, 
to know and understand the points of view, or points 
of departure, from which, the disputants respectively 
approach the subject. In this instance, especially if 
we direct our attention to our own country, in which 
the discussion first arose, it is not difficult to adjust 
the matter. There can be no doubt that the High 
Church Divines had a strong inclination towards what 
may be called the ecclesiastical point of view, while 
the Puritans took their stand upon the Scriptural or 
Biblical. The former, being strenuous assertors of 
church authority and power, particularly with refer- 
ence to the appointment and observance of holy days, 
disliked a mode of argument which separated entirely 
the Lord's day from other festivals, and placed the 
ground of its observance on an entirely different foot- 
ing. The latter, again, being zealous for the supreme 
and exclusive authority of the Divine word, preferred 
to make their appeal directly to its teachings. It is 
not of course meant that either party wholly overlooked 
the position occupied by the other. The Puritans 
were accustomed to take full advantage of the testi- 
mony uniformly borne by the Fathers to the setting 
apart of the first day of the week, as an ordinance re- 
cognised universally in the Church, from Apostolic 
times downwards, and resting largely on Apostolic 
authority ; and in so far as these venerable writers 
seemed to come short of the full Sabbatic doctrine of 
Scripture, they professed to explain and -account for 
the shortcoming. On the other hand, their opponents 
did not refuse to deal with the facts and statements 
of the Bible ; but they came to the study of them 
with minds already biassed in a certain direction by ; 



THE SABBATH. 



161 



their patristic and ecclesiastical leanings. They 
looked at Scripture too much through the eyes of the 
Fathers. 

On this point let me here read an extract from 
a Eeview of Dr Hessey's book, generally, and, I be- 
lieve, correctly, ascribed to Principal Fairbairn. He 
has been speaking of the authority of the Fathers on 
the point of the alleged essential difference between 
the Lord's day of the Gospel, and the Sabbath of the 
Decalogue, as to which he says : " These good men 
did not properly know what they were writing about.'' 
And he goes on thus — " This touches on a phase of 
patristic theology which, had it been more thoroughly 
studied by Dr Hessey, would have saved him from 
the inconsistency now adverted to, the inconsistency 
of an admission that the Sabbath had a character 
more evangelical than one has been accustomed to 
attribute to it, and is scarcely the exact institution 
to the continuance of which the Fathers objected, and 
kept him from pressing those earlier Fathers into a 
service which they are specially disqualified from 
rendering. Their acquaintance with the earlier reve- 
lations of God was comparatively meagre arid imper- 
fect. In particular, the relation between the new and 
the old in the Divine economy w r as just the point on 
which their discernment was most defective, and on 
which their judgment should be received with the 
greatest caution. It was the field where they most 
frequently lost their way, wandering sometimes into 
puerile conceits, sometimes even into entangling and 
pernicious errors. The disadvantages of their posi- 
tion naturally led to this result, and form an adequate 
explanation of it. They were, for the most part, bred 

L 



162 



THE SABBATH. 



in heathenism ; and coming to know Christianity 
before they knew much of what preceded it, they 
wanted the discipline of a gradual and successive 
study of the plan of God's dispensations, and the help 
of a well-digested scheme of Scriptural theology. 
They knew the Bible in portions, rather than as an 
organic and progressive whole ; and even for that 
knowledge they were but poorly furnished, either 
with grammatical helps or with formal expositions. 
Is it surprising if, in such circumstances, they should 
have but imperfectly caught the meaning of Old 
Testament Scripture, and should have appeared not 
always at home in proper acquaintance with its con- 
tents ? Even J erome, the most learned of them all 
in the Hebrew Scriptures, occasionally discovers what 
would now be regarded as a somewhat discreditable 
looseness and inaccuracy of statement. And both he 
and others, in applying what is written on the insti- 
tutions and history of former times, often leave us at 
a loss to say, whether the true or the false predomi- 
nated ; spiritualizings, the most arbitrary, go hand in 
hand with the crudest literalisms, and the most pal- 
pable Judaistic tendencies are fostered, while evan- 
gelical principles alone were thought to be honoured.*" 

* "Take the following from Tertuilian as a specimen of this very 
subject of days. Pleading, for the propriety of instituting and 
observing stated seasons of fasting, he thus defends himself against 
the charge of Judaizing, or, as he calls it, Gralatianizing : " In ob- 
serving these seasons, and days, and months, and years, we plainly 
Galatianize, if we are observant of Jewish ceremonies, of legal 
solemnities ; for the apostle dissuades us from these, forbidding 
us to persevere in keeping up the Old Testament, which has been 
buried in Christ, and pressing the New, because, if there is a 
new condition in Christ, the solemnities ought also to be new." 
As if the mere connection of an essentially legal observance with 



THE SABBATH. 



" A multitude of similar instances might easily be 
produced, if this were the proper place, showing that, 
in what relates to the connection between the view of 
the old in God's dispensations, the views of the 
Fathers continually oscillated between the two ex- 
tremes of excessive and arbitrary spiritualism on the 
one hand, and grossly literal and fleshly applications 
on the other. In this particular respect, they are in 
irreconcileable variance with themselves, and should 
not be appealed to as authorities on what they are so 
little qualified to determine. In truth, in this field, 
they are not the venerable doctors of the Christian 
Church, but rather its junior students ; and while 
their testimony as to the religious observance of the 
Lord's-day is to be received with implicit confidence 
(for so far it was their veracity and Christian feeling 
alone that were concerned), small account is to be 
made of their judgment respecting the alleged con- 
trariety between the Lorcl's-clay and the Sabbath. 
Dr Hessey himself has unwittingly admitted as much, 
though with apparent unconsciousness of having 
thereby surrendered an important link in his argu- 
ment."* 

Thus far Dr Eairbairn. We are apt to think that 

a Gospel era or event could transmute it into an evangelical rite 
There is here in embryo the principle of all the ritualism of 
Popery. Chrysostom saw the matter somewhat more correctly ; 
he saw what Tertullian failed to see, — that stated times and ordi- 
nances of fasting, even if connected with specific Christian events, 
were not thereby relieved of a Judaistic character ; yet he also 
wanted clearness and strength of conviction to urge their abandon- 
ment, as foreign to the genius of the Gospel ; and his advice is a 
compromise between the truth he apprehended, and the practices 
he allowed." 

* North British Keview, No. lxvii. pp. 224, 225. 



164 



THE SABBATH 



the early Fathers, living so very near the fountain- 
head of gospel truth and the Christian development, 
must have been in circumstances peculiarly favourable 
for forming a sound judgment, as well as giving cor- 
rect information, on all matters relating to the doctrines 
of the faith and usages of the church. If the proposed 
English version of their writings goes on, it may open 
the eyes of many to a somewhat strange and startling 
discovery of human weakness and prejudice making 
sad work, in more ways than one, immediately upon 
inspired guidance being withdrawn. Certainly the 
consideration stated by Dr Fairbairn ought very ma- 
terially to modify our respect for their opinion and 
deference to their authority, as regards the Scripture 
doctrine of the Sabbath. 

Following out the line of thought thus suggested, I 
would briefly call attention to a fact respecting the 
origin of the Christian Church which is not, as I think, 
always kept sufficiently in mind, when appeals are 
made to the early Christian writers on topics of this 
sort. I refer to the manifest departure from the ori- 
ginal Divine ideal which the unbelief of the Jews 
necessitated, and which the Book of Acts records. 
Beyond all doubt, it was the desire of the Master, as 
intimated from the first to His apostles, that the new 
should grow out of and fit into the old ; that the Church 
should be an enlargement and spiritualisation of the 
synagogue ; that it should start from a Jewish source, 
and have a Jewish centre or nucleus. Preaching was 
to begin at Jerusalem. The scene at Pentecost brought 
out the primary plan according to which the chosen 
nation was t6 fulfil its mission, and to grow and ex- 
pand, so as to gather around it, in one great world- 



THE SABBATH. 



165 



wide communion, all tribes and tongues, even "the. 
multitude innumerable out of all nations, and kindreds, 
and people, and tongues/' So the gospel would have 
been propagated, and the Church catholic would have 
been formed, if Israel had known the day of her visi- 
tation and accepted her high commission. But rulers, 
priests, and people successively rejected the offer, and 
set themselves against the religion of the cross. Then 
there sprang up, at Antioch in Syria, what was a new 
thing under the sun, a Gentile community of believers, 
composed from its very origin of Gentiles, and having 
a purely Gentile character ; and the great apostle of 
the Gentiles, sent for by Barnabas the "good," dropping 
his Hebrew name Saul for the Gentile form of it, 
Paul, began his ministry, making the Syrian Antioch 
his headquarters, and from thence, upon a Gentile 
footing, establishing and extending the Christian 
Church. For a time there might thus seem to be two 
centres, Jerusalem and Antioch. But soon what holds 
of Jerusalem drops out of view and disappears from 
the stage, under a doubtful cloud, it is alleged, of de- 
parture more or less from the faith ; and substantially, 
to all intents and purposes, the Church beginning at 
the Gentile city, and wearing the Gentile guise, occu- 
pies the field. So the spiritual kingdom passes out of 
the hands of Israel into the hands of the Gentiles, and 
the times of the Gentiles begin to run * 

Now, whatever good may have come out of this 

* This view is brought out, with admirable fulness and clearness, 
by Baumgarten, in his most valuable " Apostolic History," or 
Commentary on the Acts, of which a Translation has been pub- 
lished by the Messrs. Clark, in their "Foreign Theological 
Library," 1864. 



1 



166 THE SABBATH. 

evil — for surely it was an evil — however lie who is 
the Church's Divine Head, and Head over all things 
to the Church, may have overruled for gracious ends 
this inevitable result of Jewish unbelief — it might 
have been anticipated that it would entail on the 
Christian cause certain drawbacks and disadvantages. 
It made a wider and more violent breach, or wrench, 
between the old form of the covenant and the new, 
than had been originally contemplated according to 
the original ideal. It severed, more than had been 
intended, the two Testaments. It was fitted to break the 
line of connection and continuity between the less and 
the more spiritual — the less and the more perfect — 
economies or dispensations, which otherwise, if the 
primary plan could have been carried out, might have 
become clearer, brighter, and more beautiful, as the 
Holy Spirit more and more removed the veil from off 
the face of Moses, and exhibited the foreshadowing 
likeness of his features to those of Christ. Doubtless, 
Christianity has suffered loss from this cause. In 
particular, I cannot help thinking that we may trace 
to this source a tendency, which has from of old pre- 
vailed and prevails perhaps too much even to the 
present day, to see antagonism where there is agree- 
ment, difference where there is substantial identity, 
variance where there is harmony. May it not be one 
of the benefits which Paul anticipates as likely to flow 
to the world from Israel's restoration that then this 
untoward and, so to speak, abnormal state of things 
shall cease ? For then, the grand original design or 
ideal may be realised, and the unity of God's mighty 
plan of providence and grace, through all the stages of 



THE SABBATH. 



167 



its progress and development, may be seen at last 
conspicuously and gloriously demonstrated. 

But I must not dwell on this theme, although it has, 
I think, an important bearing on the subject I am now 
handling. We may thus account for the defective and 
erroneous views of the Fathers, as on many points, so 
upon this of the continuity of the weekly Sabbatic in- 
stitute, which, gradually rising in respect of spiri- 
tuality, may be traced all along the advancing line of 
God's government and revelation. The reformers, too, 
while one and all of them maintained earnestly the 
primeval institution of the Sabbath at the creation, 
and its consequent permanent obligation, were led, by 
what we may call an inherited bias, to misapprehend 
somewhat the nature of the ordinance as Israel was 
commanded to obey it, and so to contrast it far too 
strongly with the free and happy Eesurrection-day 
which it is the joy of Christians to observe, in memory 
of the risen Lord they love. 

The honour was reserved for the Puritans and 
Presbyterians to be the first to go straight to the foun 
tain of all truth, and draw pure water from thence 
alone ; to ask simply what does Scripture teach ? 
And what has been the issue so far as our own 
country is concerned? In England, not among 
extreme Calvinists and Evangelicals merely, but 
among the great body of the clergy and the laity, 
within as well as without the pale of the establish- 
ment, it came to be the all but unanimous conviction, 
— for the exceptions were inconsiderable in point of 
number at least, if not in point of weight and 
influence, — that from the beginning of the world the 
Sabbath, though subject to some outward changes of 



168 



THE SABBATH. 



form, continued to be virtually the same institution. 
Of course men held different views and adopted 
different practices as regards the way of keeping it. But 
as to the obligation of the day, and the ground of that 
obligation, there was really no material diversity of 
opinion. In Scotland, the unanimity was even more 
conspicuous. I say was. May I not say that it still 
is so ? And soon will be so more and more ! For 
despite some ugly signs, I cannot but entertain the 
hope that if only men will keep their temper, and 
have patience for a little, and not misapprehend one 
another, and calmly study some other books besides 
Cox and Hessey, we may see all go right in the end, 
and our brethren who have alarmed us, may probably 
come to be satisfied that the monster they are fight- 
ing against is, when rightly understood, not so 
very monstrous as they think, after all. 

I cannot be expected to discuss in detail the 
Scriptural evidence. But I have a few remarks to 
offer on the sort of evidence that ought to satisfy a 
mind, really bent on knowing the Lord's will, as 
Scripture reveals it. 

Dr. Hessey makes a very strong statement on this 
point. " We live,'' he says, " in an age in which the 
titles, so to speak, of our ordinances are examined 
into w T ith most exact and juridical strictness. Men, 
rightly or wrongly, (for my part I believe rightly), 
demand that no weaker evidence should be given of the 
right of the Lord's Day to succeed in whatever degree, 
to the hours of the Sabbath, than of the right of a family 
to possess the temporal honours or the estates of a 
family which has preceded it/'* As is usual, when 

* Page 18. 



THE SABBATH. 



169 



a man ventures on an extreme position, he is not 
consistent with himself. For he says in his next 
Lecture, speaking of the evidence of his theory of the 
apostolical, and therefore, at second hand, the divine 
origin of " the Lord's day." " This," its being called 
the Lord's day, " I think will at least amount to a 
high probability that the day would be chosen by the 
apostles as characteristic of the New Dispensation, and 
to an evidence that it was so chosen. At any rate, 
if we may judge from parallel instances, it is all that 
the nature of the case allows/ 5 * I accept this last rule 
or principle as utterly subversive of the former ; which 
indeed I hold to be in the highest degree unreason- 
able and presumptuous. We have no right to stipu- 
late beforehand the kind or amount of evidence which 
God must give us, or which we will accept. And in 
the present instance the demand is especially absurd. 
If "the temporal honours or the estates of a preced- 
ing family" exist as realities, and must be trans- 
mitted, — which is our case, — so that the law must 
somehow and somewhere find a legitimate inheritor ; 
the question as to evidence is surely materially 
affected by that consideration. But apart from that, 
and taking a more serious view of Dr. Hessey's 
principle, I think it altogether inconsistent with any 
right apprehension of the manner of God in reveal- 
ing himself and his mind to his intelligent creatures. 
He does not deal with us as a grammar-school master 
might deal with his scholars in the lowest form. He 
does not proceed on the assumption of our needing 
chapter and verse for everything ; so that whatever 
we are to believe must be told us in express terms, and 

* Page 38. See also page 68. 



170 



THE SABBATH. 



whatever we are to do must be categorically laid down. 
Nor does he treat us as persons who can be held in only 
with bit and bridle ; who can take no hint and draw 
no inference ; but must have proof enough to satisfy 
or silence the most perverse litigant, or the most 
petty-fogging of his counsel. On the contrary, the 
very law of revelation is that it at once appeals to, 
and puts to the proof, our good sense and our good faith ; 
and that too, in a large, liberal and generous sense. 
The Eevealer would carry us along with him, intelli- 
gently and sympathizingly, in all his revelations. 
And he trusts us. He trusts to our intelligence and 
sympathy to gather his mind and enter into it, as we 
watch his onward march and movements in the re- 
vealed course of his providence, and listen to the 
explanations, which not always, but from time to 
time, he articulately gives. 

Thus, at the creation, we have the sacred rest of 
the seventh day sanctioned by divine example, not 
by express precept ; just as in the same manner, at 
the resurrection of Christ, we have the first day 
similarly sanctioned in its stead. This mode of 
sane tioning the observance of the day is admitted in 
the second of these instances, by some who question 
its applicability to the first. Dr. Hessey, for example, 
claims for the Lord's day a divine authority on the 
ground of the practice of the inspired apostles ; for 
he thinks there is sufficient proof of their having set 
apart the first day of the week for worship and rest. 
He puts the obligation of the Lord's day on that 
footing. In so doing, he goes beyond what most of 
those who think along with him would allow; for 
generally they demur to the idea of there being 



THE SABBATH. 



171 



anything more in the New Testament notices of the 
first clay of the week, than what indicates and warrants 
the appointment of it, as a day of sacred repose, by 
ordinary ecclesiastical authority, and on the ground of 
ecclesiastical expediency. So far I agree with them. 
If it is the setting up of an entirely new institution 
that is in question, I doubt very much if the " seven 
texts usually adduced froni Scripture to prove the 
transference of the Sabbath from the seventh day to 
the first," and adduced also by Dr. Hessey with a 
totally different purpose,* will really serve his pur- 
pose. These texts are, first those recording ourCord's 
appearances to the disciples on the day of his resur- 
rection, and on the first day of the week following ; 
secondly, that which fixes the Pentecostal miracle to 
the first day of the week ; and thirdly, those w T hich 
incidentally refer to the first day of the week as 
having associated with it, in apostolic practise, coming 
together to break bread, or "to eat the Lord's Supper,' 5 
(Acts xx. 7; 1 Cor. xi. 20); almsgiving, or laying 
up in store for almsgiving, «(1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2) ; "assem- 
bling together " for worship and fellowship, (Heb. x. 
25) ; and "being in the spirit/' (Eev. i. 10.) 

Now, I freely allow, or rather strenuously hold, that 
these notices are amply sufficient to prove inspired, 
Apostolic, and therefore Divine authority, for some 
slight modification of an existing institution, such as 
the change of day involves ; all the rather, if the 
change commends itself to the intelligent and 
spiritual mind as an appropriate and all but 
necessary indication of the higher stage into which 
creation-work has come, in virtue of the new creation 

* Page 37. 



172 



THE SABBATH. 



which the Lord's resurrection has at once consummated 
and inaugurated. But I agree with those who think 
— and they are this author's own friends — that for the 
bringing in of an entirely new ordinance, as of divine 
authority, these scanty and indirect references are but 
poor supports indeed. 

Let them be taken, however, as the last links in a 
long chain of historical proof, and let the proof be 
estimated according to the ordinary way in which God 
communicates his mind to man by revelation, so as to 
lay man under obligation to himself. Then we have 
a consistent, progressive plan. 

The creation of this world is cast into the mould or 
fashion of six days of work, followed by a day of rest. 
I care not here for any question as to the length of the 
divine days, or the nature of the divine rest ; save only 
to remark that it could be no rest of mere inactivity, but 
only one of satisfaction and j oy in a finished good. This 
arrangement of the Creator, which could not be meant for 
his own sake, but must have been adopted in accom- 
modation to man, is made known to him from the 
beginning. There is no formal precept or command 
connected with it ; as there is no formal precept or 
command about marriage, connected with the circum- 
stance of a single pair being found alone together ; there 
is simply the fact discovered, that God created man, 
male and female. Such a mode of dealing with his 
intelligent creatures, by means of express orders, 
would have been inappropriate. What God reveals 
to them of his own doings, is a sufficiently authorita- 
tive rule. As such, it is owned and obeyed. 

True, the record of the observance of the primeval 
Sabbath between the creation and the Exodus is very 



THE SABBATH. 



173 



meagre ; nor is this to be wondered at ; for it did not fall 
within the scope and compass of the brief patriarchal 
narrative, which is rather to trace the progress of the 
chosen seed, and of the divine discoveries regarding 
it, than to notice customary religious usages. Still, 
there are traces of stated worship, and stated times of 
worship. And in spite of all special pleading to the 
contrary, I confess I still incline to think that the 
reckoning of time by weeks, to whatever extent it 
prevailed, is better accounted for by the Sabbatic 
institute, than by any natural periodical movement 
of the heavenly bodies. The very circumstance of 
this way of reckoning time being, however extensive, 
still only partial, confirms this view ; for if it had the 
other origin, why was it not universal ? And the 
decade system of the first Trench Eevolution may 
suggest the probability of partial, and even consider- 
able deviations from the weekly order, being the fruit 
of growing heathenism. 

Descending from the patriarchal we come to the 
Levitical economy. And there we find the Sab- 
bath, after the unavoidable disuse implied in the 
Egyptian bondage, rather revived as an old ordin- 
ance than instituted as a new one, and taking 
its place in the one only code written by the Lord's 
own fingers, and stored in his holiest shrine. All 
down the stream of prophecy we trace this institution, 
not as one among the ritual and ceremonial ordinances, 
whose observance the prophets often seemed to dis- 
parage, but as lying in the very heart of vital godli- 
ness, and being the symbol at once and the means of 
true religious reformation and revival.* 

* See Isaiah lviii., and similar passages in Jeremiah and the 
other prophets. 



174 



THE SABBATH. 



Through the whole teaching of the great Teacher it 
passes, repeatedly vindicated and exalted to the highest 
point of divine benevolence ; never once with any hint 
of its being designed to pass away. And instantly on 
his rising from the grave in which he lay, as not 
destroying, but fulfilling and satisfying the law, it is 
baptized with the new wine which he drinks with us 
in his kingdom ; and, — honoured first by his own 
fellowship with his chosen ones, — sealed thereafter 
by his Spirit's pentecostal grace, — it stands, attested 
by inspired apostolic example, the same as when a still 
more divine example hallowed it at first : to continue 
the same till the end of time. 

In some such manner, as I humbly think, the 
evidence on this subject should be combined and 
weighed. It is of an inductive character and histori- 
cally cumulative. And to one considering it as a 
whole, and not committed to the demand of mere 
categorical imperatives, it is on that very account, as 
being in accordance with the usual manner of God, 
all the more convincing and conclusive. 

But did not the institution of the ? weekly Sabbath, 
as it formed a part of Judaism, and took its place 
practically among the other formal ordinances of that 
typical and symbolical religion, partake, more or less, 
of the ritual character belonging generally to its 
worship ? So the Eeformers for the most part 
thought. They always, however, drew a distinction, 
between what they held to be merely ritual in the 
Institution, and therefore temporary, and what they 
maintained to be moral, and of original and permanent 
obligation. 1 find this briefly and clearly brought 
out in Calvin's Catechism, which was in use among 



THE SABBATH. 



175 



us in the early days of our Scottish Eeformation. On 
the Fourth Commandment, the question is put (168), 
" Are we bound, by God's commandment, to refrain 
one day in the week from all manner of labour ?" The 
answer is, " This commandment hath a certain special 
consideration in it ; for, as touching the observation 
of bodily rest, it belongeth to the ceremonial law, 
which was abolished at the coming of Christ/' (169.) 
" Sayest thou, then, that this commandment belongeth 
peculiarly to the Jews, and that God did give it only 
for the time of the Old Testament?'' " Yea, verily, as 
touching the ceremony thereof.'' (170.) "Why, then, 
is there any other thing contained in it besides the 
ceremony f " There be three considerations, why 
this commandment was given." (171), "What are 
they ?'' " The first is, that it might be a figure to re- 
present our spiritual rest ; the second, for a comely 
order to be used in the church ; and, thirdly, for the 
refreshing of servants." Again, as to the reason given 
in the Fourth Commandment for keeping the Sabbath, 
the Catechism asks : (171.) "What is meant by that 
which the Lord allegeth here, saying that it behoveth 
us to rdst, for so much as he hath clone the same?" 
" When God created all his works in six days, he ap- 
pointed the seventh to the consideration of his works. 
And to the intent we might be more stirred thereto, 
he setteth forth his own example unto us, because 
there is nothing so much to be desired as to be like 
him." " Must we then daily meditate the works of 
Gocl ? or is it enough to have mind of them one day 
in the week?" " Our duty is to be exercised daily 
therein; but for our weakness' sake there is one 



p 



176 



THE SABBATH. 



certain day appointed. And this is that politick 
(comely) order of which I spake."* 

Plainly the idea is that in the Jewish Economy, the 
mere bodily rest of the Sabbath was a capital element 
of its sacredness, that it was symbolical and signifi- 
cant of Gospel rest ; so that when the substance came 
the foreshadowing image passed away. I think it is 
an error to put that construction, even partially, on 
the Sabbath, as ordained in the Fourth Command- 
ment. At all events, it savours of over-refining, in 
the interpretation of a clear and broad law, and in 
point of fact, in Calvin's own country, it soon 
opened the door to far looser views. At the same 
time, it may be admitted that, being actually associ- 
ated in practice with other Sabbatical arrangements 
and ritual observances in the worship of Israel, the 
weekly Sabbaths did come, at least in popular estima- 
tion, to be viewed as kindred and analogous services ; 
and might, therefore, for certain purposes of evangeli- 
cal teaching, be not improperly classed with holidays 
and new moons, " which are a shadow of things to 
come ; but the body is of Christ " (Col. ii. 16-17.) This, 
as it would seem, is a sufficiently satisfactory expla- 
nation of the incidental allusion of which so much 
is often made ; although I cannot help thinking that 
Paul's meaning reaches higher. 

The apostle is not, in that passage, discussing the 
subject of set times and modes of worship. He is 
thinking of something altogether different. He is 
insisting and dwelling on the spiritual standing of 
believers, as crucified with Christ and risen with him. 

* See " Catechisms of the Scottish Reformation," edited by Dr 
Horatius Bonar. London: Nisbet & Co., 1866. 



THE SABBATH. 



177 



As crucified with Christ, they are dead to all legal 
ordinances and formal observances. These have now 
no power to enslave, because they have no right to 
judge or condemn them. Eisen with Christ, they have 
a life which sets at defiance their tyranny and 
judgment: " a life hid with Christ in God/' Are they to 
forego or compromise this liberty of acceptance and 
peace with God, on the footing of free grace and 
perfect righteousness, on which in Christ they now 
stand ? No ; not at the summons of any ordinances, 
be they ever so sacred or ever so salutary ; least of all 
at the summons of ordinances which, for any virtue 
they might ever have — to give, in symbol, any spiri- 
tual grace, — have passed away. Such, I apprehend, 
is Paul's reasoning ; and being such, it really does 
not require him to be very careful as to what ordi- 
nances he names as specimens. Nay, it is reasoning 
which will apply in full force to ordinances that are 
still of divine authority ; to Baptism, the Lord's 
Supper, the Lord's-Day ; insomuch that if at any 
time I saw a Christian brother suffering the observ- 
ance of the Lord's-day to come in between him and 
God's free grace ; keeping the holy Sabbath in a legal 
frame of mind or in the spirit of bondage ; I could 
almost find it in my heart to address him in the bold 
words of Luther, and bid him work, or play, or dance, 
or do anything with all its hours ; rather than let it be- 
come an occasion of servilely working out a righteous- 
ness of his own ; or mar the simplicity of his sole and 
single reliance on the perfect righteousness of Christ 
and the sovereign love of God. 

Here let me notice a fallacy, for the most part latent, 
which is apt to confuse or obscure our views of the 

M 



178 THE SABBATH. 

relations between the Jewish and the Christian dis- \ 
pensations. In comparing or contrasting them, we 1 |] 
very often look at the Mosaic system generally, and g 
at the Sinaitic covenant in particular, as they prac- f; 
tically told upon the mass of the people, carnal and ( 
unbelieving. To them the whole took the form of t 
what we call the covenant of works ; the natural \ 
covenant, under which all men, prior to grace, are ; j 
the covenant requiring perfect and personal obedience, ] 
and promising life on that condition : Do this and live. 
To the nation at large the whole economy, including 
the moral and ceremonial parts alike, took very much 
that character, and was viewed merely as declaring 
and enjoining the terms on which they were to possess 
the land of their inheritance. So viewed, it cannot be 
put in too strong opposition to the economy of the 
gospel. But Paul does not so view it in his Epistle 
to the Galatians. It is not the fair view to take of it. 
We should rather regard it in the light in which it 
appeared to those of the people who were spiritual 
men — Israelites indeed. Taught by the Spirit, they 
could not fail to see that, whatever else it might be, 
the transaction at Sinai was not meant to be, and was 
not really, the ratifying of any form of the covenant of 
works ; that it proceeded on the footing, not of works, 
but of grace ; that it was, in fact, the renewal or ful- 
filment of the Abrahamic covenant. The very first 
words uttered by Jehovah proclaimed salvation by 
grace alone. Any new covenant given on Sinai must 
necessarily be supplemental merely to that prior one ; 
it cannot possibly be subversive of it.* Hence true 

* This whole topic is most satisfactorily handled by Dr Fair- 
bairn in his Typology. See especially his chapters on the Sabbath 
and on the Law, 



THE SABBATH. 



179 



believers under the old dispensation found and felt 
themselves to be living under an economy of free 
grace, and realised salvation as not of works, but of 
faith. In what was ceremonial, they saw the day of 
Christ afar off, and were glad. In what was moral, 
they welcomed the directory and the means of a free 
and holy walking with God. The law was written in 
their hearts ; it was their delight ; it was to them the 
law of liberty, the law of love. 

The difference in this matter between 'them and us 
who believe now is entirely one of degree and not at 
all of kind ; it is like the difference between the re- 
stricted freedom of the son and heir in his minority, 
and his larger freedom when he comes of age. (Gala- 
tians iii., iv.) And, as an intelligent, docile, loving 
child may be seen, even in his non-age, enjoying much 
of the enlargement of his riper years, — so, many of 
the saints of old reached a height of spiritual emanci- 
pation to which, alas ! too few of us aspire ; and 
might quite as safely as any of us have dispensed 
with outward, objective, authoritative law. But that 
was not in all their thoughts, nor should it be in 
ours. 

For in all ages, and under all modes of dealing 
with him on the part of his Creator, three things 
are necessary to -the true and acceptable obedience 
of a , reasonable creature. These three things are 
motive, power, and rule — an impelling motive, an 
enabling power, an authoritative rule. In the case of 
man, everywhere and always, these must be of God — 
the motive, God's love ; the power, God's grace ; the 
rule, God's law. The motive and the power will not 
suffice \ no, not in the holiest of us alL To teach 



180 



THE SABBATH. 



otherwise is unwittingly to pave the way, and it is a 
short and easy way, to the utmost license of the worst 
antinomianism. The three factors I have named as 
entering into all real obedience — motive, power, and 
authoritative rule — may bear different proportions, as 
it were, in different dispensations, and among different 
men under the same dispensation. If God's love is 
only dimly known, and comparatively in shadow, and 
if God's grace — the grace of his Almighty Spirit — is 
granted only in comparatively small measure, his 
commanding law may bulk more prominently, and be 
more obviously needful, than when his love is more 
fully revealed and more largely shed abroad in the 
heart, and his Holy Spirit is more freely given, and 
works more energetically. But I doubt if even in 
heaven there can be service or obedience without ob- 
jective law ; and that, too, law not merely pointing 
out duty, but enjoining it ; law felt, however it may 
be made known, to be speaking from without, from 
above, and speaking with authority. Nor is this all. 
If the obedience is to be perfect, the law must be per- 
fect. Not only must the motive and the power be 
perfect — perfectly sufficient ; which they are, being 
God's full love and his omnipotent grace ; but the 
rule must be perfect — perfectly complete ;— which it is, 
being the law of the ten commandments. That law 
alone is perfect ; no other law on earth, no other law 
given under heaven among men, is or ever was. It 
omits no duty ; it leaves unregulated no department of 
life, inner or outer. Eead in the light of the tenth com- 
mandment, as Paul teaches us to read it (Eom. vii.) 
— the commandment which goes into man's inmost 
spirit, and gives its own spiritual character to all the 



THE SABBATH. 



181 



rest — it is all holy, and just, and good. It is perfect. 
But you cannot say that of it if the fourth command- 
ment is to be dropped out. For then there is a duty 
for which no rule is given, a duty which the natural 
conscience and natural religion alike acknowledge — 
the duty of setting apart a sufficient portion of our 
time for rest, refreshment, meditation, worship. What 
is a sufficient portion for any man, and how it is to 
be secured to all men, the law leaves all at sea. 
Therefore it ceases to be perfect, and the possibility 
of perfect obedience ceases too. 

Does not this consideration go far to shew that the 
positive part of the precept, fixing the very thing 
needing to be fixed, — naming the day, and naming 
it authoritatively for all mankind alike, — is really 
after all not so distinguishable, at least not so sepa- 
rable, from the moral, as we sometimes take it to 
be? It enters into the heart's core of the com- 
mandment, and is indeed of its very essence. Nor 
is this a peculiarity of the fourth commandment 
alone ; the seventh stands in the very same pre- 
dicament. That precept also has a positive part ; 
it has in its very bosom what is matter of positive 
divine appointment quite as much as the weekly 
Sabbath — the ordinance of marriage. In fact, a very 
close parallel or analogy may be traced between these 
two commandments. They both alike proceed upon 
positive divine institutions, not, as it seems to me, 
discoverable by the light of nature, not capable of 
being enforced by any natural law. Mamag^is^God's 
ordinance for securing our purity. The Sabbath is 
his ordinance for securing his own worship. And 
notwithstanding the element of positive ordination in 



182 



THE SABBATH. 



both, they are both alike essentially moral, and have 
their proper place in the perfect moral law. 

I cannot close without a few words about the teach- 
ing of the great Master on this subject. I suppose I 
may assume, as what will not now be called in ques- 
tion, that in all his teaching with regard to it, he is in- 
terpreting and not modifying the existing Sabbath Law. 
He is vindicating it, as he vindicated other command- 
ments, as for instanee, the third, the fifth, the sixth, 
the seventh, against the false glosses put upon it, and 
the misapplications made of it, by the Pharisees. He is 
not altering or relaxing it. As the Messiah, the Son of 
Man, he had no commission, no authority, and indeed, 
to speak with reverence, no right to do so. He does, 
indeed, in that character, claim to be Lord of the 
Sabbath ; but not in any other sense than that in 
which David was lord of the shewbread when he used 
it, in his necessity, for common food, and the priests 
were lords of the Sabbath, when, for the higher ser- 
vices of the Temple, they did work that, in ordinary 
circumstances, would have been accounted a profana- 
tion of the holy day. The Lord claims for himself, 
and for all men, a lordship over the Sabbath, to the 
effect of being entitled, and indeed bound, to make 
what is matter of positive institution about it give 
way, when a more paramount duty of the same sort, 
still more when a duty of a purely moral nature, or 
the duty of meeting a case of necessity, comes into 
collision with it. There is here no setting aside of the 
Sabbath law, but a magnifying of it and making it 
honourable. And it is with the Mosaic Sabbath law 
that he deals, the law of the Fourth Commandment ; 
placing it on its right footing ; expounding its true 



THE SABBATH. 



183 



meaning. For one thing, lie negatives the idea of 
there being any virtue or sanctity in mere bodily rest- 
ing on the Sabbath ; thus cutting away the ground, 
as I think, from under Calvin and others, who held 
that to be one element of the Jewish Sabbath. The 
rest enjoined he shows to be compatible with activity 
in serving God and doing good to men. 

But I do not dwell on the Lord's teaching as to what 
the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment really was, 
and how it was to be kept. Nor do I insist on the argu- 
ment for the universality of the Sabbath Institute, 
founded on the great maxim, the charter of moral 
liberty, " the Sabbath was made for man and not man 
for the Sabbath." Notwithstanding the objection that 
that is not the precise point of the Lord's teaching, — 
since it is simply the relation between the Sabbath 
and whoever may be bound to keep it that he is 
dealing with — I still think that his putting his pithy 
apothegm so widely and generally means something. 
Otherwise, why might he not have said "The Sabbath 
was made for you, and not you for the Sabbath.' 5 I 
consider him to have the whole human family in his 
view when he utters his wide and broad proclamation, 
" The Sabbath was made for man and not man for 
the Sabbath." 

But passing from that argument, I wish to point 
out again another noticeable fact about his teach- 
ing, to which I have already cursorily adverted. 
Often as he is obliged to speak of the Sabbath, he 
never once drops a hint as to its being abolished 
or superseded. On the contrary he assumes its con- 
tinuance ; at least his language is far more easily 
reconcileable with that idea than with the other. 



184 



THE SABBATH. 



And this argument will be greatly strengthened if we 
look at his teaching on another subject. He has 
occasion to speak of the place of worship, the Temple I 
not so often as of the day of worship, the Sabbath, but 
yet more than once. In conversing with the Samari- 
tan woman he does so. And how does he do so ? 
First, he states and applies the existing law about the 
place of worship. But immediately after, he takes 
care to announce the coming change, the abrogation 
of the ordinance conferring sanctity on one place 
more than on another. How much pains also does 
he take to prepare the minds of the disciples for 
the destruction of the Temple — virtually in his death, 
and literally some short time after — and the substitution 
of himself when risen, as coming instead of it, and 
of all its services ? Does not this anxious plain 
speaking about the superseding of the place of wor- 
ship, contrast strangely with the entire silence about 
the superseding of the day of worship. Does it not 
give to that silence a meaning and force not to be re- 
sisted? He very explicitly and very earnestly an- 
nounces that the ordinance of the place of worship is 
to be abolished. But, often as he is called to explain 
the ordinance of the day of Vorship, he never once 
utters a single syllable pointing in the direction of its 
ceasing or being superseded. In any teacher, aware of 
the Mosaic Sabbath being about to expire, such a 
mode of dealing with it would be held to be unac- 
countable, or something worse. In him who had to 
prepare his followers for the new kingdom, it is, as I 
view it, simply and utterly inconceivable. If the in- 
stitution was to continue, with some slight outward 
change, yet in substance the same, there was no need 



THE SABBATH. 



185 



of any express intimation to that effect. And good 
reasons might be shewn for our Lord and his apostles 
abstaining from any very formal and peremptory in- 
junctions on the whole subject, and trusting rather to 
the effect of authoritative precedent. In the state of 
society in which the truth was to be preached and the 
Church planted among all nations, it must have been 
found altogether impossible to obtain or to enforce 
the universal observance of a weekly day of rest ; and 
to have made that a matter of absolute and indis- 
pensable command would have been to clog the chariot 
of the gospel with a most serious obstacle indeed. It 
is a proof of holy, heavenly wisdom and love, that the 
Sabbath, as the Lord's day, was made to pass, as it 
were, silently from the old economy into the new, and 
left to establish itself, as it gradually did, upon the 
authority of divine example, in the consciences and 
hearts of Christians. I say, divine example. For in 
the view of all the Lord's previous teaching about the 
nature of the Sabbath, and his significant silence about 
its cessation, his two appearances to his disciples before 
he finally left the world — the first on the very day 
when he completed his new creation work, and the 
second on the weekly return of that day — must, I 
think, have been felt to be decisive as to what, in this 
matter, he would have them to do. 

I have left no room for any practical applications 
of my subject, or any discussion of the practical ques- 
tions that may be raised about the right way of ob- 
serving and the right way of protecting the Sabbath. 
I conclude with the closing words of Dr Fairbairn' s 
article. 

" A connection, such as we believe to exist, and have 
briefly indicated, between Christianity and the earliest 



186 



THE SABBATH. 



dispensations of God, involves the permanence of 
whatever is properly original, inherent in the nature 
of things, adapted to man's state generally, or neces- 
sary to his physical and moral well-being. Such a 
connection, therefore, requires, in regard to the special 
subject now under consideration, the perpetual obliga- 
tion of a weekly Sabbath, to be withdrawn from 
worldly occupations, and devoted mainly to higher 
purposes." 

" But as the Christian economy was an advance on 
the Jewish, the same connection involves also super- 
ficial differences in mere adjuncts and accompani- 
ments. Tt therefore admits of and even requires such 
circumstantial alterations as have actually taken place 
in the Lord's day, as compared with the Jewish Sab- 
bath ; in particular, a change cf day from the last to 
the first day of the week, to adapt it to the new phase 
of the divine economy, which began with the resurrec- 
tion of Christ ; in consequence of which, Sabbaths, or 
what had become distinctively Jewish Sabbaths, fell 
away, that the Lord's day might remain radiant with 
the spiritual life, with the serene and heavenly yet 
active and beneficent genius of the gospel of Christ/' 

" Cast aside the sacred design and character of the 
day, break its connection (in respect to the substance 
of the appointment) with the Sabbaths interwoven 
with the beginnings of the world's history, and en- 
shrined in the moral legislation of Moses ; place it 
simply on the footing of ecclesiastical sanction, or even 
of apostolical usage and example, we believe that you 
thereby strike at the root of its obligation ; you re- 
move it from the one foundation on which alone it 
can get a proper hold of men's consciences, and lay it 



THE SABBATH. 



187 



as a comparatively defenceless citadel at the mercy of 
the world. Men, even men not altogether or avow- 
edly unchristian, will feel that the day is in some 
sense their own, and the demands of pleasure first, 
then of drudging, toiling business to meet these de- 
mands, will grow and multiply on every hand. No 
legislative enactments nor well-meant efforts of Chris- 
tian philanthropy will be able to arrest the evil. It 
is the knowledge and belief of God's word that alone 
can secure the observance of His day." 



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